London City of Shadows

“Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night” wrote Rupert Brooke. This month, we shine a light on the nocturnal city - before and after the transformations brought by lamp light

Before the age of artificial lighting, London at night was a very different place to the city we know today.

Historian MATTHEW BEAUMONT recounts an alternative history of the city by focusing on the denizens who surfaced on the streets when the sun’s down- the lost, the vagrant and the nocturnal walkers.

We discover how the nocturnal city has inspired some and served as a balm or narcotic to poets, novelists and thinkers including Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and the feverish ramblings of opium addict Thomas De Quincey; and we hear of the journeys of the lamp-lit literary throng. including the supreme nightwalker Charles Dickens.

London was transformed when the invention and introduction of artificial lighting extended the day into the night. Historian CHRISTOPHER SUGG joins us to tell the tale of William Sugg Ltd., the company founded by his great grandfather and one of the most important providers of the infrastructure that provided gas to London for over 100 years.

We hear how gas infiltrated the shadows and brought radical changes to work and play, safety and hygiene, community and culture. And we learn something of the fascinating history of the lamp-lit city as its last lingering light is being extinguished.