Book description
400 years ago this November the most ambitious and extraordinary plot
ever conceived in this country came close to success: the attempt by
Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators to destroy in a single,
annihilating blast the entire British ruling class and royal family.
This book draws on the expertise of different writers to bring to
life the immense implications of the Plot and the strange way they
have echoed down to us over four centuries in what remains the
quintessential English festival. Pauline Croft writes about the
amazing plot itself and the anxious, unstable world of Jacobean
Britain, Antonia Fraser imagines a world in which the plot had
succeeded, Justin Champion dramatizes the national emergency that
followed the plot's discovery and its savage anti-Catholicism, David
Cressy traces how Bonfire Night has been celebrated since its
inception as a holiday, Mike Jay focuses on the most famous and
enduring rituals held each year at Lewes and Brenda Buchanan offers a
wonderful history of fireworks in Britain.
Professor Pauline Croft and Professor Justin Champion are leading
writers and researchers on late Tudor and early Stuart Britain; Antonia
Fraser is the author of the definitive The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and
Faith in 1605; Professor David Cressy's most recent book is Agnes
Bowker's Cat; Mike Jay is the author of The Unfortunate Colonel Despard;
and Brenda Buchanan is an expert on the history of gunpowder and
explosives
