Budleigh Past and Present

The villain of Bonfire Night, now caricatured in a Guy Fawkes mask What I remember from my childhood as Guy Fawkes Night on 5 November tends to be called by other names in Britain nowadays. Maybe the thought of a 17th century terrorist caught in the act of trying to blow up Parliament for religious reasons is something that we feel is a bit too close for comfort, although the town of Lewes resolutely maintains the old traditions. It has no fewer than seven Bonfire Societies states the Lewes Bonfire Council at http://www.lewesbonfirecouncil.org.uk/ described in a fellow-blogger's words as "a weird website that warns off outsiders from trying to attend." And in this Sussex town only an hour's journey from London they burn not only an effigy of Guy Fawkes himself, but even one of Pope Paul V, leader of the Catholic Church at the time of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. Maybe they do feel genuine rancour even after more than five centuries for the cruel burning of 17 Protesta...