‘a determined resourceful woman keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk’.

Urban explorers use the dérive to map the emotive force field of the city, and the way architecture and topography combine to create its 'psychogeographical contours'. Robert Macfarlane, a masterful writer-walker of the countryside, offers this summary of the practice: 'Unfold a street map of London, place a glass, rim down, anywhere on the map,

Flâneuse considers what is at stake when a certain kind of light-footed woman encounters the city and changes her life, one step at a time.