Everything the Life in the UK Test asks about history, told in order as one story. Key terms are highlighted.
Britain's story starts in the Stone Age, when people built Stonehenge in Wiltshire and the village of Skara Brae on Orkney. In the Bronze and Iron Ages they built hill forts such as Maiden Castle and spoke Celtic languages.
Julius Caesar tried to invade in 55 BC and failed. In AD 43 Emperor Claudius succeeded, and the Romans stayed for almost 400 years. Queen Boudicca of the Iceni fought them, and Emperor Hadrian built Hadrian's Wall to keep out the Picts in the north. The Romans brought roads, towns, laws and Christianity.
After the Romans left in AD 410, the Anglo-Saxons (Jutes, Angles and Saxons) arrived from northern Europe, and their kingdoms became England. Missionaries spread Christianity: St Patrick in Ireland, St Columba on Iona, and St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
From AD 789 the Vikings raided from Denmark and Norway. Alfred the Great fought them off, but many settled in the east and north of England, an area called the Danelaw. In the north, the Viking threat pushed the Scots and Picts to unite under Kenneth MacAlpin: the beginning of Scotland.
Remember: Romans in AD 43, out AD 410. Vikings from AD 789.
In 1066 William, Duke of Normandy, defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, the last successful invasion of England. The Bayeux Tapestry tells the story. William ordered the Domesday Book, a survey of who owned what, and ran the country through the feudal system: the king gave land to lords, and lords gave him soldiers in return.
Kings did not have unlimited power. In 1215 the barons forced King John to agree to the Magna Carta, which established that even the king must obey the law. Over time the king's advisers grew into Parliament: the House of Lords (nobles and bishops) and the House of Commons (knights and wealthy townspeople).
England grew. Edward I annexed Wales (took control of it): the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 put it under English rule. Scotland stayed free when Robert the Bruce won at Bannockburn in 1314. England fought France in the Hundred Years War (1337–1453). Henry V won a famous victory at Agincourt in 1415, but in the end England lost almost all its land in France.
In 1348 the Black Death killed a third of England's people. Because workers were now scarce, survivors could demand better wages. English became the language of power again: Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, and later Caxton printed the first books in England.
From 1455 two branches of the royal family fought the Wars of the Roses: the House of Lancaster (red rose) against the House of York (white rose). It ended at Bosworth Field in 1485, when Richard III was killed and Henry Tudor became king.
Remember: 1066 Hastings, 1215 Magna Carta, 1314 Bannockburn, 1415 Agincourt, 1485 Bosworth.
Henry VII joined the two roses into the red-and-white Tudor rose and brought peace. His son Henry VIII married six times. When the Pope refused to let him divorce Catherine of Aragon, Henry broke with Rome and made himself head of a new Church of England. This was part of the Reformation, when Christians in Europe split between Catholics, loyal to the Pope, and Protestants, who broke away.
Religion now swung with each ruler. Edward VI was firmly Protestant and introduced the Book of Common Prayer. Mary I was Catholic and persecuted Protestants, earning the name 'Bloody Mary'. Elizabeth I made the Church of England Protestant again and became very popular.
In 1588 England defeated the Spanish Armada, a huge invasion fleet. Sir Francis Drake, who had sailed around the world in the Golden Hind, was one of its heroes. It was the age of Shakespeare. In Scotland, the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots lost her throne to her Protestant son, fled to England, and was executed on Elizabeth's orders in 1587.
Remember: Henry VIII's wives: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
Elizabeth had no children, so in 1603 her cousin James VI of Scotland also became James I of England: one monarch, but still separate countries. The King James Bible was produced in his reign. In 1605 Catholic plotters including Guy Fawkes failed to blow up Parliament, the Gunpowder Plot. In Ireland, Protestant settlers were given land in Ulster, known as the plantations.
James's son Charles I believed kings were chosen by God and tried to rule without Parliament. This led to the English Civil War (1642–1651) between the Cavaliers (Royalists, for the king) and the Roundheads (Parliamentarians) led by Oliver Cromwell. Parliament won, and Charles I was executed in 1649.
England became a republic called the Commonwealth, with Cromwell as Lord Protector. After he died, Parliament invited Charles II back in 1660: the Restoration. His reign saw the Great Plague (1665), the Great Fire of London (1666), Wren's new St Paul's Cathedral, the Royal Society for science, and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679), which stops anyone being held in prison without going to court.
The Catholic James II was unpopular. In 1688 Parliament invited the Protestant William of Orange to take the throne, and James fled: the Glorious Revolution. The Bill of Rights (1689) limited the monarch's power, creating a constitutional monarchy in which the monarch rules with Parliament. William beat James at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland in 1690. Two political groups formed, the Whigs and the Tories, and French Protestant refugees, the Huguenots, settled in England.
In 1707, under Queen Anne, the Act of Union joined England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain, with one Parliament at Westminster. Scotland kept its own law, schools and church.
Remember: Civil War 1642, king executed 1649, Restoration 1660, Glorious Revolution 1688, Union 1707.
In 1714 a German prince became George I, the first Hanoverian king. He relied on his ministers, and Sir Robert Walpole became the first Prime Minister in 1721. Supporters of the old Stuart family, the Jacobites, rose up in Scotland under Bonnie Prince Charlie but were defeated at Culloden in 1746. Later, in the Highland Clearances, many Scottish farmers were evicted to make way for sheep.
This was the age of the Enlightenment, new ideas in science and politics from thinkers such as Adam Smith and David Hume. It was also the start of the Industrial Revolution: machines, factories, canals and steam power, improved by James Watt. Britain changed from a farming country into an industrial one.
Britain built a trading empire but lost its American colonies, which declared independence in 1776. Much wealth came from the slave trade. Campaigners such as William Wilberforce got the trade banned in 1807, and slavery was abolished across the Empire in 1833.
In 1801 Ireland joined, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Union Flag took its current form. At sea, Admiral Nelson beat the French and Spanish at Trafalgar (1805) but was killed. On land, the Duke of Wellington beat Napoleon at Waterloo (1815). At home, the Reform Act of 1832 let many more men vote and abolished rotten boroughs, seats with hardly any voters.
Remember: Trafalgar 1805 at sea, Waterloo 1815 on land.
Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901. The British Empire became the largest the world had ever seen, with over 400 million people. Engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel built railways, bridges and ships, and in 1851 the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace showed off inventions from around the world.
Reformers pushed for change. The Chartists campaigned for every man to have the vote, and more men got it in 1867. Laws in 1870 and 1882 let married women keep their own money and property. In Ireland, the potato famine of the 1840s killed about a million people and forced many more to emigrate.
Britain fought Russia in the Crimean War (1853–1856), where Florence Nightingale founded modern nursing and the Victoria Cross medal was created. At the end of the century Britain fought the Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902). Charles Dickens wrote about the hard lives of the poor, and Rudyard Kipling wrote about the Empire.
Remember: Victoria 1837–1901: an empire of 400 million people.
The First World War (1914–1918) killed millions. Britain and its Allies, including France, Russia and later the USA, fought Germany and its partners. It ended at 11am on 11 November 1918, which is why Remembrance Day is 11 November, marked with poppies.
Women's war work and the campaigns of the Suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, helped win the vote for women over 30 in 1918, and at 21, the same as men, in 1928. In Ireland, the Easter Rising of 1916 led to a split in 1922: the south became the Irish Free State, and Northern Ireland stayed in the UK.
The 1930s brought the Great Depression and mass unemployment. In 1939 the Second World War began, and in 1940 Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. That year small boats helped rescue soldiers from Dunkirk, and the RAF won the Battle of Britain in the air. German bombing of British cities was called the Blitz.
The USA joined after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. On D-Day, 6 June 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy. The war in Europe ended in May 1945, and with Japan in August 1945 after atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Plans for peace were already made: the Beveridge Report (1942) named five 'giant evils' to defeat, and the 1944 Education Act gave free secondary school to all.
Remember: WWI ended 11 November 1918. D-Day was 6 June 1944.
In 1945 voters chose Clement Attlee's Labour government. It built the welfare state: the NHS (1948), led by Aneurin Bevan, gave free healthcare, and big industries such as coal and railways were nationalised (taken into state ownership). The Empire began to end: in 1947 nine countries, including India and Pakistan, became independent, and many joined the Commonwealth.
To fill labour shortages, people came from the Caribbean (the Windrush generation, from 1948), India, Pakistan and later Bangladesh. Elizabeth II became queen in 1952. The 'Swinging Sixties' brought new music and fashion, and laws on divorce and abortion changed. England won the football World Cup in 1966, and the voting age fell to 18 in 1969.
In 1973 the UK joined the EEC, which later became the European Union. Margaret Thatcher, the first woman Prime Minister (1979–1990), privatised state industries (sold them to private owners), reduced trade union power and won the Falklands War in 1982. In Northern Ireland, decades of violence known as the Troubles were ended by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Tony Blair's Labour government (1997–2007) brought devolution: Scotland got its own Parliament and Wales its own Assembly in 1999, and Northern Ireland got an Assembly too. In 2010 no party won a majority, so the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed a coalition under David Cameron and Nick Clegg. London hosted the Olympics in 2012, the UK left the EU in 2020, and Charles III became king in 2022.
Remember: 1948 NHS, 1973 EEC, 1979 Thatcher, 1997 Blair, 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
The UK is a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch. The King is head of state but stays politically neutral. He opens Parliament with the King's Speech and appoints the Prime Minister. The constitution is not written in one document; it comes from laws, conventions and court decisions.
Parliament at Westminster has two Houses. The House of Commons has 650 elected MPs, one for each constituency, chosen by first past the post at a general election held at least every five years. The Speaker keeps order. The House of Lords is not elected; it checks and revises new laws. A proposed law is a bill; once passed it becomes an Act of Parliament.
The leader of the largest party becomes Prime Minister and chooses the Cabinet, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the economy), the Home Secretary (crime and immigration) and the Foreign Secretary. The second-largest party forms the Opposition, with a Shadow Cabinet. Civil servants carry out government policy and stay politically neutral.
Some powers are devolved to the Scottish Parliament (Holyrood), the Welsh Parliament (Senedd) and the Northern Ireland Assembly (Stormont). Local councils run services like schools and rubbish collection. Courts are independent: magistrates hear minor cases, the Crown Court hears serious ones with a jury of 12, and the Supreme Court is the highest court of appeal.
Remember: 650 MPs, elections at least every 5 years, vote at 18.