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Maximum is around 02.00UT (3.00am BST) on the 13th August, but it'll be worth watching any clear night from now - they'll be there, but at a much lower rate - maybe one or two an hour tonight, usually reaching around 80m/hour at the maximum.
Two years ago I saw a few hundred meteors over the course of 4h from 11pm from a dark sky site on Salisbury Plain - it's well worth getting away from light pollution if you can, to best appreciate the fast-moving shooting stars that appear to radiate from a point in the NE of the sky on the Perseus/Cassiopeia border between the recognisable W of Cassiopeia and the NNE horizon (though you can see them all over the sky, not just in that little area)
Best technique I've found? Lie on your back on a mat on the ground, or in a reclined deckchair facing NE but gazing upwards. Try to get as much sky into your field of vision as possible and relax :-) You'll hopefully start seeing them after about 20 minutes, when your dark adaption's improved.
Occasionally I've seen fireballs (streak followed by very bright flash as the particle vapourises), very often I've seen trails that linger in the sky for a few seconds or longer (ionisation), but mostly they're quick streaks of light about the brightness of the brightest stars.
Clear skies!
--
simon
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Sky chart for 2330BST 13th August 2007 (click for larger)
