1951

Conservatives win General Election

Lucian Freud paints Interior in Paddington

The Festival of Britain is staged

1953

Lindsey Anderson directs the film O Dreamland

1954

Critic David Sylvester applies the term 'Kitchen Sink Artists' to John Bratby et al

John Bratby
Still Life with Chip Frier 1954
© Estate of the Artist
large image and caption

1956

The British Caribbean Welfare Service is established

Suez Crisis; the UK and France bomb Egypt to force the re-opening of the Suez Canal

Free Cinema movement founded

Lorenza Mazetti's Together produced with a grant from the BFI Experimental Film Fund

Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson direct the film Momma Don't Allow

The Kitchen Sink artists represent Britain at the Venice Biennale

Roger Mayne begins photographing Southam Street, London

Artist members of the communist party launch the journal Realism

1957

Report sponsored by the government suggests that homosexuality should not be a crime

British PM Harold Macmillan tells Britons they 'have never had it so good'

Michael Young's influential Family Kinship in East London published

Alain Tanner and Claude Goretta direct the film Nice Time

1958

Aldermaston March, demonstrators protest against Britain's first hydrogen bomb tests

Britain's first race riots occur in Nottingham and Notting Hill

1959

Conservatives win election

First incarnation of the Notting Hill Carnival takes place at St. Pancras Hall, it moves to its current location in 1964

Colin MacInnes's novel Absolute Beginners published