Seán Lang

British history is full of wonderful people (quite a few of whom were clearly stark raving mad, but that’s history for you) and exciting events – all of which helped make Britain the sort of place it is today. This Cheat Sheet sets out the lie of the land, and identifies the leaders and the events that mattered.

Getting a bit lost in the battles and events of the First World War isn’t hard, so this Cheat Sheet offers up a handy timeline that puts some of the war’s key events into order for you. It shows how events in different theaters of war related to each other and gives you a bird’s-eye view of the way the war developed as a whole.

Many different battles were fought in the First World War and a case can be made for the importance of them all. This list includes some of the most important ones, which had an impact on the whole shape of the war. 1914 28 June: Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand is shot in Sarajevo, the capital of B

‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.’ So go the words spoken each November on Remembrance Sunday in Britain, as the British pause to remember the dead of the First World War. Other countries hold similar ceremonies to honour their war dead. But what else should people remember from the First World War?

The finger-pointing about who caused the First World War began almost as soon as the war was over. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany accepted responsibility but the Germans angrily denied that the war was their fault. The French insisted that the treaty correctly apportioned blame, but the Americans were very wary of putting the whole blame for the war on one country, and within a few years the British had changed their tune too: David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, described the states of Europe as having somehow slid into war, with no one country more to blame than any of the others.

In some ways, the Second World War was even more terrible than the First World War: It introduced the world to heavy bombing, mass murder, genocide and the atomic bomb. Most of the leaders in the Second World War had served in the First World War. So what exactly was the relationship between the two world wars?

Many people have presented the First World War in books and films as the end of a Victorian ‘golden age’. Even the weather adds to that impression: many people have seen pictures of soldiers up to their knees in thick mud, whereas the years before 1914 – especially the long hot summer of 1911 – seemed to be full of sunshine and hope.

Even people who don’t know much about the First World War tend to know the phrase ‘Lions led by donkeys’. It’s supposed to have been said by a German general about the British soldiers: It means that they were unquestionably brave but that their leaders were fools who threw the men’s lives away in pointless attacks.

The office of Prime (or ‘first’) Minister developed in the eighteenth century, when the First Lord of the Treasury came to be regarded as the official head of the government. The first person who is generally regarded as having acted as Prime Minister was Sir Robert Walpole. Sir Robert Walpole 1721–1742 Whig