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There's a good article and study on comparing dollar cost averaging vs. lump sum:
Forbes - Dollar Cost Averaging Vs. Lump Sum Investing—How To Decide
Vanguard - Dollar-cost averaging just means taking risk later
kiskubai
set up a vanguard account and get a couple of ETF's of varying risks. If you're looking long term any crash will play itself out and there is no point trying to time the market.
You could put £200 in a month and if the market goes down put more in! if it goes down even more, keep putting more in so you have bought more at lower levels. Don't lump it all in one go.
Buying individual stocks is higher risk and I think I only have about 5% on individual stocks, 95% in ETF's.
If you had bought into a S&P 500 tracker before the crash in 2008, you'd still be doing pretty well. Equally however, if you had bought during the 2000 crash it would be 13 years ybefore you start seeing profit. However, assuming you carried on investing while the S&P was down, you'd be up much sooner.