Matthew Beaumont, Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London – Verso, July 2025

A captivating history of the city at night and the people, writers and workers who inhabit the London darkness

In this brilliant work of literary investigation, Matthew Beaumont shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers: the fetid, treacherous streets known to Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and his ecstatic peregrinations; 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. In each case, the city is revealed as a place divided between work and pleasure, the affluent and the indigent, where the entitled and the desperate rub shoulders.