TIMELINE - British-French events since 1066

(Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy was greeted with pomp by the Queen on Wednesday for the first French state visit in more than a decade.

Here are some highlights of relations since 1066, the last time England was invaded.

1066 - William, Duke of Normandy, invades England. His decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings and subsequent crowning as William I resulted in profound political, administrative, and social changes in England.

1337 - The Hundred Years war between England and France started mainly over a dispute about succession to the French crown. The struggle involving several generations of English and French claimants to the crown ended in 1453, with England retaining only Calais on the continent.

1558 - Francois de Lorraine, second duke of Guise, took Calais from the English.

1701 - Conflict between England and France over succession to Spanish throne. The treaties of Utrecht, which ended the conflict, marked the rise of the British colonial empire at the expense of both France and Spain.

1751 - Engineer Nicolas Desmarets suggested the idea of digging a tunnel under the English Channel.

1756 - The Seven Years War started, involving all great powers of Europe, with France and Britain as foes. Britain won North America and India in the Franco-British Treaty of Paris in 1763 and became undisputed leader in overseas colonisation.

1802 - Napoleon Bonaparte backed a scheme for a tunnel for horse-drawn carriages under the Channel.