Night Walking in Nocturnal London

Urban Laboratory Co-Director Matthew Beaumont will offer an introductory overview of the history of London at night through the mysterious, semi-criminal figure of the nightwalker, from the Middle Ages to the present.

'Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night', the poet Rupert Brooke once wrote. Matthew Beaumont celebrates the night walk as a way to encounter an altogether different city and different self.

London at night is another place entirely to its daytime incarnation, with different rules and different people. Before the age of gas and then electricity, the night-time city was a very different place to the one we know today - and when wandering the streets at night usually meant a person was up to no good. Listen to how prostitutes, thieves and other 'social deviants' inhabited London once the sun had gone down.

There will also be the chance to talk to Matthew after his talk, and to buy signed copies of his book Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London (Verso, 2015) whilst enjoying a drink at our bar.

Tickets cost £10 for adults and £8 for concession holders and London Transport Museum Friends. UCL students can take advantage of a special half price offer, and get £5 tickets using the code 'NIGHTWALKING'.

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