There are nights of such tranquility and beauty that they salve the soul, make medicine for the mind.

Most women would not feel safe walking alone at night, and he doesn't even acknowledge that in being able to have this freedom he has something many people don't.This is a small book, yet it conveys memorably the magnitude and majesty of its subject - a charming blend of nature diary, sound archive and scent library. and some time thinking about where I would have stood vis a vis the enlightenment and the counter-enlightenment. I don't know if there's quite enough to the topic to support the length, and the author does fall into academic blether occasionally, but the medieval history parts and the section on Blake are tremendous, vivid and fascinating. As an inveterate London walker (although always by day, hardly ever at night), this was a book I was keen to read. One of the strengths of Nightwalking is the way in which it uncovers the hidden historic topographies of London that lie beneath our cement-laden streets.

Even in a newly illuminated city they were thought to carry little pools of darkness around inside themselves. We use cookies on this site to understand how you use our content, and to give you the best browsing experience. I appreciated the Marxist analysis of both the history and literature included in the book and I thought it contributed to his argument. The whole work is washed over with modern liberal marxist platitudes, obviously everyone out at night is a political act of the underclasses and everything bad is the middle class's fault and no criminal act is the responsibility of its doer. After all, wouldn't that have been more to the point of the purpose of this book, than for example describing De Quincy walking around in Wales with a tent on his back, that he used to sleep in at night?Matthew Beaumont offers an alternative account of the city streets through the prism of its historical ‘nightwalkers’, uncovering hidden topographies of nocturnal London. There is something very quiet and immediate about night time walks and these are perfect to listen to before falling asleep.

Before the age of the gas lamp, the city at night was a different place, home to the lost, the vagrant and the noctiambulators. Beaumont comments that in the title of Dickens’s ‘Night Walks’, ‘night’ might be read as either an adjective or a noun. A walk in the deepest darkest night is something I would fear even in the countryside, but Lewis Stempel brings your senses alive with rich language and thought.If, if, you go out after the decline of the day… As the human world settles down each evening, nocturnal animals prepare to take back the countryside.