Fireworks Night, by Conn Iggulden

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Fireworks Night, by Conn Iggulden

Halloween is over and now the party season can really get underway, starting with Bonfire Night. Here, Conn Iggulden muses upon Fireworks Night, the origin of burning 'Guys' and alternative explanations for how fireworks are made.

On November 5th 1605, Guy Fawkes and his conspirators tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament and King James I. Fawkes was a religious extremist, a terrorist bent on the destruction of British democracy. It was King James himself who ordered bonfires across the land on that first 5th November, to celebrate his survival. Four hundred years later, we still remember the event. To this day, the cellars under Parliament are searched before every new session, in case someone had the same idea as Guy Fawkes.

It’s not clear when ‘Guys’ were first added to bonfires. Fawkes wasn’t burned, though it’s likely he was put on a rack and stretched. He held out for days, but in the end, he named the other conspirators. The conspirators were part-hanged, then drawn and finally quartered. Fawkes died a wiser but much taller man.

When I was a boy, I used to raise money with ‘penny-for-the-guy’ – a dummy stuffed with newspapers. My brother and I would take him on a go-cart to the local shops and beg for money with him. Looking back, it was a bit of an odd thing to do and I don’t know if that was normal behaviour for the seventies or not. We did make enough to buy comics and sweets each year.

It isn’t easy to find a proper guy today. My local school in Hertfordshire just has a bonfire and of course a professional fireworks team, who set them all off by computer. The crowd stays well back behind ropes and it’s so safe you might as well be watching it on TV. Yet there are around a thousand firework-related injuries each year, which makes me wonder if all those frightening adverts are worth the taxpayers’ money. I won’t name the childhood friend who stuck a rocket up his own bottom and lit it. He sort of deserved what happened to him and he still has one left, so that’s all right.

It was at my local school display two years ago that one of my children asked how the rockets worked. I told them that the organisers stuffed little winged creatures into the tubes and that high-pitched sound was them screaming. Childhood can be fun for a parent. By chance, another mother started chatting to me about it, carrying on the idea. It turned out she was an illustrator and I went home and wrote the first part of ‘How to Blow Up Tollins’. I’d often thought about writing a book for young children, but I didn’t want something too sweet. There would be no unicorns or kittens in my book! It was also a chance to go flat-out for humour. I usually write about Genghis Khan and there just aren’t many laughs with old Genghis. Slaughter, yes, lots of that, but no giggling.

So enjoy another Guy Fawkes night and pop a religious extremist on the bonfire. Gather the children round and remember, remember the 5th of November.

Written by Conn Iggulden

WIN A PILE OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS!

Conn Iggulden is a bestselling author. In The Dangerous Book for Boys, Conn taught us how to do all the things that, in some cases, we didn't even know were skills missing from our general knowledge - tying knots, how to teach your dog tricks, the rules of cricket. Now, Conn's new children's book, Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children, will teach you how fireworks are really made!

We have 20 piles of children's books to give away, each including a copy of Conn's new book, Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children. Enter here.

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