November 5, 1605, a solitary figure is arrested in the cellars of Parliament House. Although he first gives his name as John Johnson, a startling series of events begins to unfold under torture. Guy Fawkes, as he is really called, is one of thirteen who have conspired to blow up the parliament, the King, and his Lords, thereby throwing the whole country into turmoil, out of which these traitors hoped to raise a new monarch sympathetic to their cause, and return England to its Catholic past.

The circumstances that surround what drove these thirteen disaffected Catholics, led by the charismatic Robert Catesby, to such a desperate act are the focus of the Gunpowder Plot Society, for the circumstances are far from straighforward.

Conflicting historical details confirm one thing - that the official account of this event that persists in our folklore cannot possibly be true.