How many days until Bonfire Night?

Bonfire Night falls on 5 November and commemorates the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, when Guy Fawkes was found in the cellars beneath the House of Lords with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder and a plan to kill James I. Londoners lit bonfires that night in relief, and Parliament made the commemoration compulsory for close to two hundred and fifty years.

Four hundred years on it is still one of the most widely observed dates in the British year, and one of the very few that is genuinely local rather than national. Town and village committees run organised displays, rugby clubs and scout groups build the bonfire, and the whole thing happens outdoors in cold, usually damp November weather. Lewes in East Sussex holds the largest and strangest celebration of all, with bonfire societies parading in costume through the town.

The food is specific to the night: toffee apples, parkin in Yorkshire and Lancashire, bonfire toffee, jacket potatoes cooked in the embers, and soup handed out in plastic cups. Sparklers are the childhood memory almost everyone shares, along with the rhyme that begins "Remember, remember the fifth of November".

Displays are frequently held on the nearest weekend rather than the 5th itself, so it is worth checking local listings. This countdown runs to the midnight that opens 5 November, the date the commemoration is fixed to.