The Tudor age is ending and the stakes are deadly. As a young servant in Yorkshire, you live in a country divided by religion and fear, where Catholic Recusants worship in secret and government spies are always listening. When Guy Fawkes leaves for Europe to fight with Catholic armies, you follow, learning the dangerous science of gunpowder and explosives.

Returning to London, hopes of greater freedom under the new King James collapse, and a desperate group of men plot a shocking plan: blow up Parliament, kill the king and change England forever. Told in a gripping second-person narrative, the reader is thrust into the heat of the Gunpowder Plot. With handy hints, timelines and vivid scene-setting, you experience the conspirators' secret meetings, close calls and the catastrophic failure of the plot, right through to interrogation, imprisonment and their grim fate.

A glossary and index support confident curriculum use and independent reading.
 
Illustrated by David Antram
 
Size: 212mm x 240mm x 4mm
Paperback
No. pages: 32
Series: You Wouldn't Want to Be
Publisher: Bonnier Books Ltd
Imprint: Hatch
Published: 3 Sep 2026