Bonfire night

Today we are celebrating one of the most important festivities in the UK and some countries of the Commonwealth. Since the Gunpowder Plot, which took place on 1605, it is a tradition to commemorate the Guy Fawkes failure with fireworks displays. 

The Lord Mayor's Show

The Lord Mayor's Show is a 798 years old parade.

The new Lord Mayor this year is called Fiona Woolf and she is only the second woman to hold the office in nearly 800 years.  

The newly-elected Lord Mayor started the day with a breakfast in Guildhall. The Mayor was escorted, in her coach, to the Mansion House, her future official residence. Fiona watched the show from the terrace and joined them after the flypast executed by the Royal Air Force. 

The parade travelled down Poultry, Cheapside, New Change, St Paul's Churchyard, Ludgate Hill, Fleet Street and The Strand, where Lord Mayor swore her loyalty to the Crown in the Royal Courts of Justice.

The fifth of November

Remember remember the fifth of November. The rhyme tells us it’s important to make the 'gunpowder, treason and plot' stick in our memory, but how much of this grisly tale of rebellion and religion do we really know?

Newham fireworks display (3rd of November, 2013)

In 1605 a group of 14 provincial Catholics tried to kill the King James I of England, who was Protestant, and replaced him with a Catholic one. The 5th of November, Guy Fawkes, one of the conspirators, was arrested when the police found a cache of explosives placed beneath the House of Lords. To celebrate the fact that the King was alive, the people lit bonfires around the city.