Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London - Softcover

"Part literary criticism, part social history, part polemic, this is a haunting addition to the canon of psychogeography." - Financial Times "A wonderful book, that has many fascinating things to say about the night-time life of our capital down the ages. Rarely has a book on the subject of darkness been so illuminating; all insomniacs should read it." - Standard "He releases an ancient, urban miasma that rises from the page, untroubled by electric illumination, allowing us to inhale what Shakespeare's contemporary Thomas Dekker called "that thick tobacco-breath which the rheumaticke night throws abroad" - Independent "An important and lively book." - Times Higher Education Supplement "The joy of Beaumont's book is the way it illuminates both literature and urban politics through the splendors and panics of their nighttime journeys." Flavorwire "Rarely has a book about darkness been so illuminating." Ian Thomson, Spectator, Books of the Year "In Nightwalking, Matthew Beaumont rubs shoulders with the deviants, dissidents and dispossessed who lurk in the shadows of Shakespeare, Johnson, Blake and De Quincey." Evening Standard "In this teeming and glorious book, Matthew Beaumont probes far into the shadows." - Alexandra Harris, Times Literary Supplement "This is a book pulsing with life, just as the streets do, despite attempts to cut that liminal, semi-illicit life off. The foreword and afterword, by Will Self, beautifully bracket the book, reinforcing the idea that the city is layered over time, and that each layer is accessible, and can be made vivid in the imagination. Why Nightwalking has not won a major award is beyond mine." - Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

In Nightwalking Matthew Beaumont recounts an alternative history of London-populated by the poor, the mad, the lost, the vagrant and the noctambulant. He shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers: Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and his ecstatic peregrinations and the feverish ramblings of opium addict Thomas De Quincey; and, among the lamp-lit literary throng, the supreme nightwalker Charles Dickens. We discover how the nocturnal city has inspired some and served as a balm or narcotic to others.