On the evening of 5 November, Britain sets things on fire. Bonfire Night marks the discovery, in 1605, of a plot to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament and kill King James I. It failed, and Britain has been celebrating the failure with explosives ever since — which is, when you say it out loud, a slightly odd thing to do for four hundred years.
What happened in 1605
A group of Catholic conspirators, led by Robert Catesby, rented a cellar beneath the House of Lords and filled it with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder. An anonymous letter warned one peer to stay away. The cellars were searched, and in the early hours of 5 November Guy Fawkes was found guarding the barrels with a slow match and a watch. He was tortured, tried, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered — though he jumped from the scaffold and broke his neck first.
How it is celebrated now
Organised public displays have largely replaced back-garden fireworks, mostly for safety reasons, and most towns put on a bonfire and a display on the nearest weekend. A “guy” — a stuffed effigy — is often burned on top of the bonfire. Children used to wheel their guy around the streets asking passers-by for “a penny for the guy”, though this has mostly died out.
The food
Bonfire Night has its own menu, and it is all designed to be eaten outdoors in the cold: parkin (a sticky oat and ginger cake from Yorkshire), toffee apples, bonfire toffee, jacket potatoes cooked in the embers, and soup or hot dogs from a stall.
Lewes
The town of Lewes in East Sussex takes Bonfire Night more seriously than anywhere else in the country. Six competing bonfire societies parade in costume through the streets with flaming torches and burning crosses, dragging elaborate effigies of that year’s least popular public figures to be blown up. Tens of thousands of people attend. It is spectacular, chaotic, and the train station is closed for the night.
The rhyme
Every British child learns it:
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.