Betty Boothroyd, a Labour MP, becomes the first woman Speaker of Britain's House of Commons

English poet Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats deals openly with AIDS

Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales, announce that they have agreed to separate

English novelist Sebastian Faulks publishes Birdsong, set partly in the trenches of World War I

Millennium Approaches, the first part of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, is premiered in London

Vikram Seth publishes his novel A Suitable Boy, a family saga in post-independence India

Eduardo Paolozzi's vast bronze sculpture The Wealth of Nations is installed at South Kyle, near Edinburgh

Scottish author Irvine Welsh publishes his first novel, Trainspotting

Rachel Whiteread's Untitled (House) is a concrete cast of the interior of a house in London's East End

UK and Irish premiers John Major and Albert Reynolds sign the Downing Street Declaration, a strategy for peace in Nothern Ireland

New East Stand opens at Twickenham rugby ground.

France's President Mitterrand and the British queen Elizabeth II together open the tunnel under the English Channel

Trinidadian cricketer Brian Lara sets a new world record, scoring 501 not out when playing for Warwickshire against Durham

Louis de Bernières publishes Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a love story set in Italian-occupied Cephalonia

Tony Blair wins the leadership of the Labour party, and sets about establishing what he calls New Labour

The IRA declares a cease-fire in Northern Ireland, a gesture followed a month later by Protestant paramilitaries

The Stables Gallery is opened in the stables of Orleans House

Britain and Argentina come to an agreement concerning the future exploitation of oil around the Falkland Islands

British mathematician Andrew Wiles publishes, in Annals of Mathematics, his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem

British choreographer Matthew Bourne has a great success with his all-male Swan Lake

The restored Privy Garden at Hampton Court is opened following extensive archaeological excavations and meticulous investigation beneath the hugely overgrown predecessor garden, matching in with the newly restored South Front after the fire

A new extension to the Public Record Office building in Kew is completed. All the PRO’s records are now in one place and Chancery Lane is closed

British artist Tracey Emin causes a stir with Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995

New West Stand opens at Twickenham rugby ground increasing capacity to 75,000.

An IRA bomb at Canary Wharf shatters the fifteen-month ceasefire achieved after the Downing Street Declaration