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J. GORING. Burn Holy Fire: Religion in Lewes Since the Reformation. Cambridge, England: Lutterworth Press, 2003. Pp. 192, maps and tables, indices. $35.00 (paper).
For many years November 5th has been observed in the Sussex town of Lewes by bonfire societies that have maintained the anti-Catholic origins of the festival. Whereas in the rest of the UK the date has become an occasion for fireworks and barbecues, in Lewes a torchlight procession of inhabitants and visitors burn the pope in effigy and parade anti-Catholic banners. But in Lewes the event commemorates the burning of the Protestant martyrs in 1557 as much as the Gunpowder plot in 1603; although in 2003, 35,000 people witnessed a depiction of Osama Bin Laden burn alongside an effigy of Pope Paul V. The event seems to be a religious atavism which has continued the declension from the Reformation to Puritanism, Dissent and Nonconformity. Much of Jeremy Goring's engaging history of Lewes is preoccupied by...