On the Fifth of November 2011, I attended the Bonfire Night celebration in Lewes, Sussex. It was an impressive display of fireworks, complete with effigies of the Pope and Guy Fawkes, blazing tar-barrels, and crosses symbolising the local Marian martyrs. I was not aware that the town had been renowned for these celebrations since the late seventeenth century. In fact, I did not even know what the celebration was for or what it symbolised. I was told by a fellow spectator that it was an old tradition of which the local bonfire-running societies were very proud. And although he could not remember the exact meaning or origin of the event, he was confident I would enjoy the legacy it had left. A few days later, out of curiosity, I looked for some material on its background and found the renowned book by James Sharpe, Remember, Remember. I was aware that Sharpe was giving his own twist to modern folklore, nevertheless it raised my interest in Catholic historiography.

The Fifth of November celebrations hark back to the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a Catholic scheme to blow up Parliament along with King James I and other members of the royal family. The aim was to reinstate a ‘tyrannical’ Catholicism, and one of the protagonists was the Yorkshireman Guy Fawkes. The event traditionally represents the sense of anti-Catholicism, Catholic tyranny, and absolutism from the time. But throughout the centuries the meaning has shifted with the annual celebration reinventing itself. In Lewes, festival-goers don't just burn effigies of Catholics and popes, but of devils, and politicians including Thatcher and Tony Blair – indeed of anyone deemed unpopular enough in any given year. Nowadays, children no longer request ‘a penny for the guy’ and in most cases don't even know the story of Guy Fawkes and his plot; instead, the Fifth of November has found a place as a winter festival, along with Halloween, which has overshadowed the Christian holy days of All Saints and All Souls. It still has popular allure and is one of the very few British traditional festivals still celebrated today.