Up All Night

There is a specific energy to it. Cafes and shops close their shutters. Darkness descends. ‘The air begins to tingle’, wrote John Dos Passos of twenties New York. ‘It’s tonight if you drink enough, talk enough, walk far enough, that the train of magical events will begin.’

Barely four centuries ago, music, fashion, sex, architecture, art and booze first fused to create what we now call nightlife. It happened, strangely enough, in 17th-century Japan, in a remote marshland outside the shogun’s capital. This den of hedonism and iniquity became a breeding ground for new ideas – and while the venues have changed, nightlife has been at the frontier of cultural innovation ever since.

Up All Night is the story of the good times and the great ones. Who invented jazz? What did 18th century Londoners do for entertainment? Why was Detroit the birthplace of techno? Who built Las Vegas? And what, in our increasingly online lives, are we missing when we pass up the chance of a big night out?

Join party historian Imogen Willetts for a guided tour of history’s wildest nights out – piecing together tantalising ephemera and foggy reminiscences from shogunate Japan to noughties Hollywood, and every iconic scene in between.

‘Spills over with colourful anecdotes . . . Reading Up All Night makes you want to put it down – if only to step out into the seductive, thrilling night’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘A sparkling cultural history . . . Its procession of nocturnal scenes is immersive, intoxicating and full of surprises’ MIKE JAY, author of PSYCHONAUTS