‘To stay out late, to remain awake and mobile from dusk till dawn, to walk the streets all night as Charles Dickens did during a bout of insomnia in 1860, is to enter an unfamiliar state of being and seeing,” notes Dan Richards in Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark. An immersive blend of memoir and investigative journalism, the book finds the author unearthing the stories of shift workers and those who do essential labour while the rest of us sleep.
Richards, who reveals he is naturally more owl than lark, meets dock workers in Southampton; outreach workers at St Mungo’s providing support for the homeless; a search and rescue team in Lincolnshire; and night ferry operatives transporting sleeping passengers from Aberdeen to Lerwick in Shetland. In the early hours, he visits The Dusty Knuckle in Dalston, London, a bakery that trains young people with troubled backgrounds in the art of bread making. He also talks to the mothers of newborn babies negotiating night feeds through a fog of hormones and exhaustion.
