Guy Fawkes

2022 - 11 - 2

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Image courtesy of "The Guardian"

Tipoff letter to thwart Guy Fawkes' gunpowder plot to go on display (The Guardian)

Anonymous letter warned Lord Monteagle of 'terrible blowe' and not to attend parliament on 5 November 1605.

Over the centuries, the charge of treason was “warped, adapted and expanded”, said Dr Euan Rogers, principal medieval specialist. The detailed charges against Anne Boleyn, accused of incest with her brother and of treason for plotting the death of Henry VIII, are included. The exhibition includes the renewal application for his fraudulent British passport, and the pocket watch, cufflinks, signet ring and cypher – his personal possessions confiscated under the treason law. At the heart of the exhibition is the original huge ornate parchment and ink statue roll, written in Anglo-Norman French, which contains the act, and is shown for the first time. Boleyn escaped being burnt, the normal punishment for a woman, with Henry VIII in an act of “leniency” instead permitting her to be beheaded by sword at the Tower of London. Eleanor, who as a noblewoman could not be tried for treason, escaped with life imprisonment on religious charges and was forced to perform a barefoot “walk of shame” through London.

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Image courtesy of "Ilford Recorder"

Tribute to Bill Turnbull to play on Pet Classics on Guy Fawkes Night (Ilford Recorder)

Good Morning Britain presenter Charlotte Hawkins who takes over from Turnbull said he was an 'excellent journalist and brilliant presenter'.

“She doesn’t like early mornings, though. It’s a time when they get very stressed and it’s really visible to see in your pet. “(You are) able to learn ballroom dancing at that level (so) you’ve really just got to embrace it, throw everything into it. “And, then they said: ‘Well (would she like) to ask him a question?’ “So it is a worrying time for a lot of owners wondering how to deal with that.” “Lots of animals find it (a) really difficult, really anxious time.

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Image courtesy of "The Guardian"

Guy Fawkes review – mild comedy needs some satirical gunpowder (The Guardian)

Despite some strong performances, this production is undone by flip-flopping between the serious and the silly.

But Reed’s script hovers undecidedly between the urge to produce laughs and the need to tell the story. Unlike the powerful final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, when the silliness suddenly drops away, any poignancy at the close of Guy Fawkes is undermined by the tendency to flip-flop between comedy and drama throughout. But David Reed’s new play, which started life as a radio drama with his comedy troupe The Penny Dreadfuls, tries to find the laughs in this tale of treason.

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Image courtesy of "Newsroom"

A more resonant occasion than Guy Fawkes (Newsroom)

It's time Aotearoa asks why we celebrate Guy Fawkes instead of looking to our own uncomfortable past to commemorate the lives of Taranaki Māori who suffered ...

On the fifth of November, with Bryce at their head, they entered Parihaka to be met by fresh bread, and children singing. The Parihaka prophets were arrested and held for over a year in prisons around the country without trial. Practically the whole of the Taranaki was confiscated, from Parinihi to Waitōtara. After war broke out in 1863 again our Parliament passed three laws, for the governor to declare a district “in rebellion”, to confiscate the land of those living there, and for a British loan to finance the war to be paid with profits from the lands taken. As a child growing up in the 1960s, Guy Fawkes Day was an exciting time, especially as I could spend my pocket money on miniature, yet decidedly dangerous, explosives that we experimented with in the weeks leading up to the actual day. I may have had a vague notion that these were effigies of Guy Fawkes, who we later learnt had tried to blow up the English Parliament in 1605.

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