Up All Night

Spills over with colourful anecdotes … The less talked-about locales are Willetts’s real ace card. Take the story of Shanghai as a post-First World War party destination, where thousands of revolution-fleeing Russians found work in the city’s clubs and dance halls - including Moscow’s entire royal ballet. Or post-Second World War Las Vegas, where the Nevada nuclear test site became an entertaining light show in what’s dubbed “Atomic Tourism” … 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: original in conception, prodigious in scope and written in appropriately high style. Its procession of nocturnal scenes is immersive, intoxicating and full of surprises – MIKE JAY, author of PSYCHONAUTS
A jaunty, jam-packed history of big nights out that revels in spectacle and theatricality, happiest when bringing the reader into spaces that have been transformed by imaginative special effects – EMMA WARREN, author of DANCE YOUR WAY HOME
Most party people can’t remember how their night started - Imogen Willetts digs all the way back to the seventeenth century. Her thoroughly researched history of nightlife gives us a fizzy chronology of fine partying, with an emphasis on the expression, rebellion and escape that clubs and bars have always provided. I hereby raise a strong toast to this book, which gives historical evidence that a mad mix of music, cocktails and people in our face will never go away – MICHAEL MUSTO, legendary cultural critic and chronicler of New York
What’s the nightlife goss? It’s all here babes! From witches in moonlight to 1980s East Village to Margate 2026, Up All Night covers a vast expanse of nightlife. The research and detail is sublime: the perfect celebration of the place where the best of life happens. Get your glad rags on: we’re going out out – AMY ZING, co-founder of queer club collective SINK THE PINK, MARGATE ARTS CLUB and MARGATE PRIDE
Meticulously researched and dangerously fun, Up All Night is so vivid and insightful, I needed a lie down afterwards – JODIE HARSH, author of YOU HAD TO BE THERE

Imogen Willetts is a creative producer and lecturer. Having worked at the Royal Academy of Arts for several years, where she launched the ‘RA Lates’, a sell-out series of immersive parties that reimagined the nightlife of seminal artistic movements, she now works as a Lecturer at Kingston School of Art.

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