Join Professor Chris Bishop, presenter of the 2008 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, for a spectacular family lecture packed with demonstrations of pyrotechnic chemistry. How did Chinese incendiaries made from honey lead to the development of gunpowder? Why do the loud bangs made by fireworks have their origins in photography? How did an accident in a nineteenth-century kitchen lead to the development of new chemistry for this century's fireworks? All will be revealed through exciting, and sometimes explosive, demonstrations.