5 January – Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in the United States for an official visit and talks with President Harry S. Truman.[2]
10 January – An Aer LingusDouglas DC-3 aircraft on a London–Dublin flight crashes in Wales due to vertical draft in the mountains of Snowdonia, killing twenty passengers and the three crew.[3][4]
30 January – British troops remain in Korea, where they have spent the last eighteen months, after a breakdown of talks aimed at ending the Korean War.[6]
1 February – The first TV detector van is commissioned in the UK as the beginning of a clampdown on the estimated 150,000 British households that watch television illegally without a licence.[7]
6 February – King George VI dies at Sandringham House aged 56 early this morning. It is revealed that he had been suffering from lung cancer. He is succeeded by his 25-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh who ascends to the throne as Queen Elizabeth II.[8] The new Queen is on a visit to Kenya at the time of her father's death and returns to London the following day. She will be the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch with a reign of 70 years.
8 February – Queen Elizabeth II is proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland at St James's Palace.[8]
31 March – Computer scientist Alan Turing is convicted of "gross indecency" after admitting to a consensual homosexual relationship in Regina v. Turing and Murray. He consents to undergo oestrogen treatment to avoid imprisonment.
21 May – Eastcastle Street robbery: a post office van is held up in the West End of London and £287,000 (worth £8,189,519 in 2019) stolen, Britain's largest post-war robbery up to this date;[12][13] the thieves are never caught.
24 July – Somali sailor Mahmood Mattan, 28, is convicted of the murder of pawnbroker Lily Volpert, and sentenced to death at Glamorgan Assizes; his conviction will be quashed 45 years later.[17]
16 August – Lynmouth Flood: 34 people killed in a flood at Lynmouth in Devon. Many other people are injured and numerous buildings are damaged.[18]
3 September – Mahmood Mattan becomes the last person to be hanged at Cardiff Prison.[19]
19 September – English film star Charlie Chaplin, sailing to the United Kingdom with his family for the premiere of his film Limelight (London, 16 October), is told that by instruction of J. Edgar Hoover he will be refused re-entry to the United States until he has been investigated by the U.S. Immigration Service. He chooses to remain in Europe.[21]
29 September – The Manchester Guardian prints news, rather than advertisements, on its front page for the first time.
9 October – Knowsley Hall shootings: Lady Derby and her cook are injured, and the butler and under-butler killed, when trainee footman Harold Winstanley fires a Schmeisser pistol at Knowsley Hall in Lancashire. Winstanley flees and is later arrested.
29 November – First GPO pillar box of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II to be erected in Scotland, on the Inch housing estate in Edinburgh, is attacked in protest at its bearing the Royal Cipher of Elizabeth II, considered historically incorrect in Scotland.[29]
4–9 December – Great Smog blankets London, causing transport chaos and, it is believed, around 4,000 deaths.[30]
16 December – Harold Winstanley, the perpetrator of the Knowsley Hall shootings, is found guilty but insane at Manchester Assizes, and sentenced to detention at Broadmoor Hospital.
25 December – The Queen makes her first Christmas speech to the Commonwealth.[32]
30 December – An RAF Avro Lancaster bomber crashes in Luqa, Malta, after an engine failure, killing three crew members and a civilian on the ground.[33]
^ a b"George VI | Biography & Stammer". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
^"Churchill renews 'special relationship'". On This Day. BBC. 5 January 1952. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
^Yates, A. H. (2 January 1953). "Airflow over Mountains". Flight. 63 (2293): 2–3. Archived from the original on 11 January 2013. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
^"Korea truce talks hit stalemate". On This Day. BBC. 30 January 1952. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
^"Test drive for TV detector vans". On This Day. BBC. 1 February 1952. Archived from the original on 27 December 2007. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
^ a b c dPenguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
^"King George VI dies in his sleep". On This Day. BBC. 15 February 1952. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
^"Churchill Discloses Britain Has Atom Bomb and Plant; Britain's Atom Plane Undergoing Tests; Churchill Bares Atom Bomb Plant". The New York Times. 27 February 1952. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
^"Wembley – Saturday 3 May". Archived from the original on 11 March 2007.
^"London Mail Robbery". The Times. No. 52318. London. 22 May 1952. p. 6.
^"£200,000 Stolen From Van". The Times. No. 52319. London. 23 May 1952. p. 6.
^"History". Cairngorm Reindeer Herd. Reindeer Company. Archived from the original on 22 July 2010. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
^"Prescription Charges" (PDF). Royal Pharmaceutical Society. 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 October 2007. Retrieved 13 June 2010.
^Marshall, Prince (1972). Wheels of London. The Sunday Times Magazine. pp. 80, 93–96. ISBN 0-7230-0068-9.
^"Law Report: 4 March 1998: Man hanged in 1952 for murder is cleared". The Independent. 4 March 1998. Retrieved 4 August 2023.
^"Flood devastates Devon village". On This Day. BBC. 16 August 1952. Archived from the original on 15 December 2007. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
^Thomas, Elizabeth (3 September 2022). "How shopkeeper's unsolved murder saw an innocent man hanged". Wales Online. Retrieved 4 August 2023.
^"Dozens die in air show tragedy". On This Day. BBC. 6 September 1952. Archived from the original on 25 October 2007. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
^"US Immigration slams door on Chaplin". On This Day. BBC. 19 September 1952. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
^"The Lost Decade Timeline". BBC. Archived from the original on 21 August 2006. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
^"Tea rationing to end". On This Day. BBC. 3 October 1952. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
^Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 404–405. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
^"Many die as three trains crash at Harrow". On This Day. BBC. 8 October 1952. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
^Gruffydd, Gethin (13 February 2007). "Welsh Republican Movement 1946–1956: Time Line". Alternative Welsh Nationalist Archive. Retrieved 8 September 2010.
^"Claerwen Dam Opened by the Queen: Birmingham's Link With Wales". The Times. No. 52451. London. 24 October 1952. p. 4.
^"New Ambassadors Theatre". arthurlloyd.co.uk. Archived from the original on 9 November 2007. Retrieved 4 December 2007. Performances were suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.
^Farrugia, Jean Young (1969). The Letter Box: a history of Post Office pillar and wall boxes. Fontwell: Centaur Press. ISBN 0-900000-14-7.
^"London fog clears after days of chaos". On This Day. BBC. 9 December 1952. Archived from the original on 24 October 2007. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
^"The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1952". Retrieved 4 December 2007.
^"Queen makes first Christmas speech". On This Day. BBC. 25 December 1952. Archived from the original on 28 December 2007. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
^Caruana, Richard (30 December 2012). "60 years ago: Lancaster crashes into Luqa village". Times of Malta. Archived from the original on 15 February 2020.
^Evans, Paul; Doyle, Peter (2009). The 1940s Home. Oxford: Shire Publications. ISBN 978-0-7478-0736-0.
^The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN 1-85986-000-1.
^Keating, H. R. F. (1982). Whodunit? – a guide to crime, suspense and spy fiction. London: Windward. ISBN 0-7112-0249-4.
^"Peter Windsor". ESPN F1. Archived from the original on 26 September 2012. Retrieved 5 February 2011.
^Rachel, Daniel (7 October 2014). The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters. St. Martin's Press. p. 103. ISBN 978-1-4668-6521-1. Charles Jeremy Jankel was born on 16 April 1952.
^Simon Cowell: Wildlife SOS presenter and conservationist dies aged 72
^"Hilary Mantel, celebrated author of Wolf Hall, dies aged 70". the Guardian. 23 September 2022. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
^Ultravox star Chris Cross, who co-wrote smash hit Vienna, has died
^"Charlie Whiting obituary". The Sunday Times. 15 March 2019. Retrieved 17 March 2018.