{"title":"Books by Matthew Beaumont","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781788738927","title":"The Walker","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom Charles Dickens’ London to today’s megacities, a fascinating exploration of what urban walking tells us about modern life—for fans of Rebecca Solnit, Olivia Laing’s \u003ci\u003eThe Lonely City\u003c\/i\u003e, and literary history.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e“A labyrinthine journey into the literature of walking and thinking,” as seen in the lives and works of Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, Ray Bradbury, and other literary greats (\u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There is no such thing as a false step. Every time we walk we are going somewhere. Especially if we are going nowhere. Moving around the modern city is not a way of getting from A to B, but of understanding who and where we are. In a series of riveting intellectual rambles, Matthew Beaumont retraces episodes in the history of the walker since the mid-19th century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e From Dickens’s insomniac night rambles to restless excursions through the faceless monuments of today’s neoliberal city, the act of walking is one of self-discovery and self-escape, of disappearances and secret subversions. Pacing stride for stride alongside literary amblers and thinkers such as Edgar Allan Poe, André Breton, H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys and Ray Bradbury, Beaumont explores the relationship between the metropolis and its pedestrian life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Through these writings, Beaumont asks: Can you get lost in a crowd? What are the consequences of using your smartphone in the street? What differentiates the nocturnal metropolis from the city of daylight? What connects walking, philosophy and the big toe? And can we save the city—or ourselves—by taking to the pavement?","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305581228405,"sku":"9781788738927","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781788738927_b4d7bf46-5e6c-479f-af75-769a90aebba2.jpg?v=1786027063"},{"product_id":"9781804290071","title":"How We Walk","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"In this fascinating and wide-ranging book, Beaumont reminds us that walking is far from a neutral activity. With the help of Frantz Fanon, Beaumont locates freedom at the level of the body; free from the systems of oppression, exploitation, and harassment.\"\u003cbr\u003e–Lauren Elkin, author of \u003ci\u003eFlâneuse\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow race, class, and politics influence the way we move\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou can tell a lot about people by how they walk. Matthew Beaumont argues that our standing, walking body holds the social traumas of history and its racialized inequalities. Our posture and gait reflect our social and political experiences as we navigate the city under capitalism. Through a series of dialogues with thinkers and walkers, his book explores the relationship between freedom and the human body\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHow We Walk\u003c\/i\u003e foregrounds the work of Frantz Fanon, psychiatrist and leading thinker of liberation, who was one of the first people to think about the politics of ‘walking while black’. It also introduces us to the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, who wrote that one could discern the truth about a person through their posture and gait. For Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, the ability to walk upright and with ease is a sign of personal and social freedom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough these excursions, Beaumont reimagines the canonical literature on walking and presents a new interpretation of the impact of class and race on our physical and political mobility, raising important questions about the politics of the body.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307439960437,"sku":"9781804290071","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781804290071_50790602-2e60-4d63-b6cc-d89dee1948c1.jpg?v=1786026680"},{"product_id":"9781804298480","title":"Nightwalking","description":"\u003cb\u003eA captivating literary portrait of London explored at night by some of the city’s most iconic writers throughout history\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night,” wrote the poet Rupert Brooke. Before the age of electricity, the nighttime city was a very different place to the one we know today – home to the lost, the vagrant and the noctambulant. Matthew Beaumont recounts an alternative history of London by focusing on those of its denizens who surface on the streets when the sun’s down. If nightwalking is a matter of “going astray” in the streets of the metropolis after dark, then nightwalkers represent some of the most suggestive and revealing guides to the neglected and forgotten aspects of the city.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this brilliant work of literary investigation, Beaumont shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers: Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and his ecstatic peregrinations and 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 jostle in the streets.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith a foreword and afterword by Will Self, \u003ci\u003eNightwalkin\u003c\/i\u003eg is a fascinating literary exploration of the writers who traverse the city at night and the people they meet.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307640009077,"sku":"9781804298480","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781804298480_1f23813e-b4f2-467d-8314-4cb5aa9373cd.jpg?v=1786026836"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-matthew-beaumont.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}