The Royal Institute of Psychogeography was founded around 1978, in a small room above a second-hand bookshop in Bloomsbury, where a cartographer, an architect, a photographer, a crime writer, a retired history professor and several enthusiastic wanderers began meeting every Tuesday. They were fascinated by the invisible ways in which streets, buildings and neighbourhoods affected people. The name came from Leslie Rowse, a London historian (not officially a member of the Institute) who joked that if Britain had royal institutions dedicated to astronomy, geography and science, perhaps there should also be one dedicated to studying the invisible forces of the city. Someone wrote down the words: The Royal Institute of Psychogeography. The joke remained.