Guy Fawkes

On Saturday night, a effigy of a police officer wearing a pig mask was displayed on a bonfire as huge crowds descended on the city for bonfire night. The disturbing effigy stood atop stacks of pallets that towered over the surrounding area in Birkenhead, Merseyside's north end district. On Sunday, a local man caught crowds adding the finishing touches to the stack as he passed by the bonfire night preparations. The video begins as the man drives down the road passing a community-built football cage with green fencing. As he clocks the massive stack of wooden pallets, he appears out the passenger side window in a car, saying, 'F**k me, it's a big mound that.'

In what was the first King's Speech in Parliament since King George VI addressed MPs and Lords in 1950, Charles paid tribute to his late mother Queen Elizabeth II before laying out the government's reform agenda. The entire day was rich in English constitutional history, as Black Rod (bottom right) exemplified, with a ban on tapping on the door of the House of Commons to request MPs' presence in the Lords. The King and Queen Camilla arrived in Westminster in the Diamond Jubile State Coach, having participated in a royal procession from Buckingham Palace. Yeomen of the Guard (top right) undertook Parliament for a ceremonial search, continuing a tradition that dates back to the foiled Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Guy Fawkes, a Catholic conspirator who was concealing enough explosives to blow King James I and the remainder of the English aristocracy to smithereens, was discovered back in the 1970s. MPs and lords alike gathered today to listen to the King's big moment, but moods were much lighter today.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Britain for the second year this year, with crowds flinging petrol bombs at police officers, lighting fireworks at homes, and putting garbage cans on streets. Around 100 youths in Edinburgh clashed with riot police who had fireworks crashing their shields, while firefighters in Greater Manchester were pelted with bricks. Although much of the chaos on November 5 was caused by pockets of rebels up and down the country, in some towns, autumnal festivities were marred by protesters donning Guy Fawkes masks as part of the annual Million Mask March.