Pope Burning Trivia

Pope Burning used to be common on Bonfire Night.

• Now, the only place that does it religiously is the Sussex town of Lewes, just an hour outside London, where Ulster politico Ian Paisley owns a chapel.
• Bonfire Night celebrates the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, the failed Catholic coup to kill the Royal Family and the ruling elite in 1605. To this day, some wags joke that Guy Fawkes is the only man to get into Parliament with the right idea.
• Lewes in East Sussex is England's de facto Bonfire Capital. The town has five rival bonfire societies, but the biggest is Pope-burning Cliffe, with more than 1,000 members.
• The town has been staunchly Protestant for centuries. The crypto-Catholic vicar who wrote "Good King Wenceslaus" was nearly beaten to a pulp in Lewes by Protestant Bonfire Boys.
• In recent years, Lewes' Bonfire Boys have tried to stress that they are burning a historical hate figure, Pope Paul V, who reigned at the time of the Gunpowder Plot.
• However, opponents-and some Bonfire Boys-view this as a whitewash. Besides burning the Pope and Guy Fawkes, Cliffe hangs a NO POPERY banner over the high street and marches through town with burning crosses.
• By coincidence or not, Northern Ireland firebrand Ian Paisley owns a chapel in Lewes, one of more than a dozen churches that his ultra-Protestant denomination has on the British mainland.
• The Sunday before Bonfire Night, Orangemen from the Home Counties hold a Bonfire Service at Paisley's chapel, praising God for keeping Britain Protestant.
• True Brits depicts a first in Bonfire history, when the local priest, Father Flood, attended the Bonfire Service. The guest preacher that year was Kyle Paisley, Ian's son.
• The year after Father Flood's roasting at the service; Lewes was hit by one of the worst floods in living memory.
• In addition to the perennial Catholic hate figures, Lewes' Bonfire Boys have burned tableaux of Hitler, Idi Amin, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Osama bin Laden, Bill Clinton and George Bush.
• In 2001, Lewes' Bonfire boys were forced to give their tableau a hasty makeover as Osama bin Laden. Prior to 9/11, the effigy had started out life as an image of George Bush.
• Weird coincidence: In 1972 - just months before the World Trade Center officially opened - Cliffe's Bonfire tableau featured an Arab terrorist on an airplane. The title? "HIJACK".
• George Dubya was eventually consigned to the flames in 2003.