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Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London

£9.9£99Clearance
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No missing or damaged pages, no tears, possible very minimal creasing, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins.

Clearly there are people who enjoy this type of writing because there are some good reviews on here but I think it's awful, just not for me. However, these divisions were not always unambiguous, creating a liminal space in which the different classes could intermingle and consume the unique offerings of the night. It is a hugely detailed work of literary and historical investigation which is over detailed and laborious at times but, in the end, repays the effort sometimes needed to get through it. Lewis-Stempel describes vividly what he has sensed, seen, and heard during his night rambles, and how this is a markedly different experience from wandering in daylight hours.

There were some lovely descriptions and interesting anecdotes but this was essentially a jumble of ideas.

The most surprising revelation of Beaumont’s book is how recently we have come to regard nightwalking with anything other than suspicion and alarm. For many years a curfew helped to promote the association of nightwalkers with felons (including streetwalkers) and demons. As someone who regularly walks their dogs at night (far less chance of running into cyclists for my dog to chase at that time), I really enjoyed reading his observations about night walking and how damaging the electric lights can be. In one of his memorandum book entries from 1857, Dickens sketched out a plan for writing about the city in a new way. Sorry Mr Beaumont, this wasn't my bag, although I did learn some new bizarre words such as obnubilate!

However, if you are inclined to give it a try, it more than pays off your time and effort as it is an intriguing study. None the less I enjoyed the bits of this book that were poetic and described the beauty of wildlife and creation as seen in Herefordshire, England and France at night time. The belief that nightwalking was a precursor to deviancy precipitated the establishment of laws against nightwalking in England in 1285, aiming to reduce rising crime levels in town and cities, to regulate the lives of the general public and to restrict the movements of itinerants and vagrants.

We can't truly say we know our landscape, flora and fauna, unless we experience it's nocturnal dimension.I started reading it and was disappointed that in the introduction he makes no effort to acknowledge that he is a white man and therefore can go for a walk in the middle of the night without really thinking about it.

Beaumont has written a rambling exploration of people rambling in London at night, and particularly those who have written about rambling people in the past.There just wasn't enough of this book to give it 5 stars; the writing is beautiful and accomplished and conveys a true love of the countryside and natural world, I also enjoyed the author's choice of poems. In between we get Wordsworth’s compositional walkabouts, Tennyson’s dark maidens (although no “Highwayman” and that’s puzzle), Chaucer, William Blake, and Thomas De Quincey.

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