#20 PUBLICATION DAY!

Into the Night is out today in paperback

Dear friends,

It’s publication day for the paperback of Into the Night, my book about going from being a primary school teacher in Brixton to a volunteer police officer in the same neighbourhood: patrolling the streets on Friday nights, interacting with the community from inside a police uniform, and seeing other sides of a place I thought I knew.

Into the Night is a slightly unusual book about policing. Commonly police books fall into two camps: memoirs by former officers, offering a broad defence of the institution, and polemics against policing, arguing that it should be abolished or reformed.

Rather than wading into these debates, Into the Night is an attempt to productively unsettle them, to ask the deeper, wider questions that lie beneath. James Baldwin’s idea that art should ‘expose the questions the answer hides’ is one of the quotes taped up on my wall.

As I wrote in the book’s foreword:

As a carer and educator, the main agenda I bring to this book is a long-held and urgent desire that we get better at supporting the most vulnerable groups and that we bring them from the margins to the heart of our society, amplifying their voices and recognising how much they have to give, as well as how much they need. Rethinking the role of the police is part of that process – but only part.

The police stir up strong feelings – and for good reason. This book is neither a defence of the police nor a polemic against them. Rather it is an attempt to direct a steady gaze at our most fraught, complex institution, at the entrenched social challenges we send police to deal with and at our current system, which fails so many.

Into the Night confronts the biggest issues with policing today – the institutional misogyny and racism in particular - but, at its core, it is a book about care, community, inclusion and collective memory. It is an exploration of who and what we value as a society: questions much bigger than policing.

Researching and writing this book, I’ve come to think that it’s meaningless to talk about the police in isolation from other social institutions and from our wider hopes and intentions as a society.

Many conversations about the police seem, to me, like a group of people staring at a broken tool and asking what to do with it – repair, improve, bin, replace – without stopping to ask what we’re actually trying to achieve and what kinds of tools would help us get there. I can’t imagine conversations about any other social institution happening in such a peculiar vacuum, devoid of context or connection to our wider aims.

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One of the pleasures of writing Into the Night has been the opportunity to interact with writers I admire and to hear from them that the book’s deeper project comes across. Polly Morland, the author of A Fortunate Woman, described Into the Night as ‘a vivid meditation on the nature of community and place of care in our society’. Sukhdev Sandhu, author of Night Haunts, called it: ‘A textured, compassionate book about cities, loss, wounded souls’ and asked ‘What kinds of care has our society outsourced to the police? What could they learn from the work of nurses or teachers? Matt Lloyd-Rose asks so many crucial, haunting questions . . .’

Another writer I greatly admire, Jay Griffiths, called it ‘a breathtaking work of social imagination’, an endorsement that made me think Ah, so that’s what I’m trying to do! She helped me clarify that social imagination is the essence of my work and writing, which led to the name of this newsletter and to all manner of other conversations and collaborations.

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There can be a tacit assumption that books about big social issues are likely to be worthy or dull or depressing. I suspect this assumption comes from the undervaluing of care and community in our society. The reality, of course, is that all of life is in stories of care and community: drama, humour, tragedy, poignancy, playfulness, joy, absurdity. Into the Night tackles some dark themes, but it is not a dark book. It is full of the life, voices and energy of the South London night.

Writing it was a hopeful act, an attempt to illuminate the complexity of our current social stalemate so we can see it clearly, discuss it more lucidly, and respond to it more effectively. I wrote it to contribute to the conversations we need to have about how we live well together, our responsibilities to one another, and how we value, include and empower every individual, at every stage of life.

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It’s been satisfying to see Into the Night make its way into the world over the last year. The long extract in The Guardian magazine on coronation day carried it to a lot of readers, as did being Book of the Week on Radio 4 and discussing it on the New Statesman podcast. Other highlights have included positive reviews across the broadsheets and a particularly thoughtful analysis of the book in the TLS, by Prof Ian Loader, Head of Criminology at Oxford.

The book has had a good first year. I would love it to travel further, now it’s in a more compact, affordable form, and reach more readers, particularly those working in, or interested in, the worlds of education, care, inclusion and community.

Thanks to everyone who has supported Into the Night over the last year. I’d be very grateful if you could spread the word about the paperback and continue to help it on its way.

Warm wishes,

Matt

p.s. I shared some of the books that have inspired me recently in The Guardian last weekend. You can see my list here.