Matthew Beaumont - Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London

T he Leverhulme Trust funded the research on which this book is based and, first and foremost, Id like to thank this institution for its generosity in awarding me a Research Fellowship in 201213. At a time when scholarly activity is more and more instrumentalized, more and more closely monitored, the Leverhulme Trust is exemplary for the freedom and independence it affords the academics whose scholarship it sponsors. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to those who supported my application: Rachel Bowlby, Terry Eagleton, Kate Flint, Colin Jones and Jo McDonagh.

My thanks go to the following for making reading suggestions, inviting me to present my ideas in the form of papers and lectures, or, more generally, providing me with encouragement and support in this project: Tariq Ali, Rosemary Ashton, Jo Barratt, Tim Beasley-Murray, Amelia Beaumont, Joanna Beaumont, Michael Beaumont, Sebastian Budgen, Ardis Butterfield, Stephen Cadywold, Ben Campkin, Warren Carter, Gregory Claeys, Holly Clayson, Oskar Cox Jensen, Greg Dart, Paul Davis, Joseph Drury, Ger Duijzings, Geoff Dyer, Gavin Everall, Mark Ford, Anita Garfoot, Helen Hackett, Andrew Hemingway, Clive Holtham, Philip Horne, Ludo Hunter-Tilney, Colin Jones, Natalie Jones, Tom Keymer, Roland-Franois Lack, Eric Langley, Andy Leask, Rob Maslen, Jo McDonagh, China Miville, John Mullan, Andrew Murray, Lynda Nead, Katherine Osborne, Francesca Panetta, William Raban, Neil Rennie, Jo Robinson, Will Self, Jane Shallice, Natasha Shallice, Bill Sharpe, Alison Shell, Nick Shepley, Nick Shrimpton, Chris Stamatakis, Gabriel Stebbing, Hugh Stevens, Matthew Sweet, Jeremy Tambling, John Timberlake, Sara Thornton, Susan Watkins, Abigail Williams and Henry Woudhuysen. Those friends, colleagues and acquaintances who made reading recommendations relating to nightwalking in the later nineteenth or twentieth centuries will, Im afraid, have to be thanked in the sequel to this book.

For reading chapters in draft form and offering perceptive and constructive criticism, I am especially grateful to Michael Beaumont, Greg Dart, Paul Davis, Helen Hackett, Ludo Hunter-Tilney, Jo McDonagh, Nick Papadimitriou and Chris Stamatakis. Above all, I am grateful to Will Self, who read the entire book in draft form and whose support throughout its composition has been of incalculable importance to me.

Tom Penn commissioned this book, though he has since moved to Penguin, and Id like to record my heartfelt gratitude to him. Leo Hollis inherited the project, but his commitment to it has been unstinting and in his reading of the manuscript he has been as encouraging as he has been penetrating I could not have hoped for a better editor. My sincere thanks, too, to Mark Martin, in Versos New York offices, for overseeing the books production so efficiently; and to Charles Peyton for his judicious copyediting.

Finally, for accompanying me on nightwalks in London and its fringes on various occasions over the last couple of years, I owe special thanks to Ludo Hunter-Tilney, Nick Papadimitriou, Will Self and David Young. These walks, and the meandering conversations that accompanied them, have influenced this book in ways that, though perhaps not immediately apparent, have nonetheless been of crucial importance. This page too, as the poet Octavio Paz wrote in his Nocturno de San Ildefonso, is a ramble through the night.

The book is dedicated, with all my love, and in admiration, to my sons Jordan and Aleem Beaumont.