Recently published by Canongate, Dan Richards’ latest book is an immersive hybrid of investigative journalism, personal memoir and nocturnal psychogeography, writes Andy Childs.

“The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?” – John Fowles, The Magus.

Good question, if perhaps a little existential for comfort, but one that Dan Richards tackles with fearless aplomb and great sensitivity in his latest book. Overnight is an immersive hybrid of investigative journalism, personal memoir and what I would tentatively suggest is nocturnal psychogeography (although I might be over-egging things a little there). 

The hours between dusk and dawn undoubtedly have a complex and mysterious hold on our collective imagination. All of us have our own personal tales of the night I’m sure, and Richards’ introductory story — stuck on a freezing mountainside with his Dad, spending the night waiting to be rescued — kickstarted the idea for this book. He set out to examine the working lives of those people who, while the rest of us sleep or try to sleep, are engaged in the essential work that ensures the world keeps turning, that we are kept safe and that vital preparations are made for the daylight hours ahead; stuff that most of us take for granted but without which almost everything we rely on during the day would be catastrophically affected. There are chapters on dock workers in Southampton, the night ferry that sails from Aberdeen to the Shetlands, a night working on the streets of London with the heroic people from St.Mungo’s Homeless Charity, the Search & Rescue team at Humberside Airport, and, less dramatically but infinitely more appealing to this sweet-toothed reader, a stint with the jolly bakers at The Dusty Knuckle in Dalston. Notwithstanding the fact that these professions are fascinating in themselves, what makes these and other similarly-themed chapters so engaging and, it has to be said, unexpectedly moving at times, is Richards’ ability to gain the confidence of his subjects — especially those workers who are more used to a solitary nocturnal existence. His genuine curiosity and admiration in what they do and how they do it, and his self-effacing manner and sense of humour that ensures that any air of self-importance, so often prevalent in similar undertakings, is kept well in check. Richards is supremely sympatico. Why live in the night? Well these people are required to and, as the book makes no bones about extolling, we should all be eternally grateful.

It’s not all successful rescue operations, companionable cups of tea in the small hours and delicious croissants though. After the initial chapter at Southampton Docks, written in December 2020, we are suddenly plunged into a quite harrowing account of Richards’ life-threatening battle with Covid and his own traumatic experience of darkness, both physical and metaphorical, at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Ironically he had been trying in vain to gain hospital access in order to research a night shift for this book and although its quite obvious that this was not his chosen scenario with which to observe hospital night life, Richards nevertheless turns his ordeal into a riveting story of night terrors, bad dreams and agitated mental dislocation — none of it over-dramatised nor under-played but all valuable grist for a writer of Richards’ talent. And all the while paying fulsome tribute to the NHS staff who with skill and care ushered him back to dischargeable health after six months in hospital. Over a year later — a year not without its setbacks after-effects — Richards returned to the Edinburgh Infirmary to review his medical notes and to compare his feverish post-Covid account of what he went through, with what actually happened. By now the book was back on track and moving into more reflective mode: ‘Perhaps it was due to my stay in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, but the ideas of supervision and attendant care felt relevant and precious in a way they’d never done before’. There’s a chapter entitled ‘Babies’, which will surely resonate with anyone who’s ever been a parent — especially mothers and especially with a sick baby — the torture of interrupted sleep, the long night hours spent worrying and trying to cope. The words of one mother: ‘I don’t think I have ever slept really deeply since’ are a common refrain. Just ask my wife. There’s also a delightful chapter on Tove Jansson and her Moomin books — ‘when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep — then they appear’, a visit to the Aberfoyle Bat Tunnel in Scotland and digressions on the Night Mail and the Shipping Forecast, both comfortingly familiar constants in our night-time landscape.   

Interspersed throughout this enchanting book there are also cogent asides on how the nighttime affects the way we think and behave, how it provides fertile ground for our deepest fears and anxieties as well as our sense of safety and comfort. And how prolonged experience of working through the dark hours can change us. It’s obviously a multi-faceted and extremely complex subject and more than can be captured in a single tome. Other writers have covered similar terrain and Richards is generous in his bibliography. He has also very usefully included a well-curated discography — records that soundtracked the writing of the book. 

Overnight has changed Dan Richards’ life — ‘the empathy, passion and resilience of those I’ve met has changed the way I live and see the world’. It is such a well-intentioned, honest and compassionate book (we need more of all that in this day and age, right?), it can hardly fail to affect anyone who cares enough to read it…which I urge you to do.

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‘Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark’ is out now, published by Canongate. Read an extract from the ‘Bats of Buckfastleigh’ chapter here.