with Michael Shallcross. Inscribing Pandemonium.
First broadcast 5 February 2025.
Dr Michael Shallcross is a writer based in York, UK. Michael's unfinished project is called Inscribing Pandemonium. You can read about it here: The Point – Inscribing Pandemonium
Inscribing Pandemonium is about why authors introduce devils or devil-like characters into their writing, and what happens when they do. Michael focusses on writers who try to use the devil to help convey a particular angle on social and political change - only to find that the devil isn’t always that easy to control. Originally, Inscribing Pandemonium was going to be a traditional academic book, but it became clear that a book just wasn’t going to contain the subject. Instead, Michael left the book unfinished, and he’s now exploring a far more expansive, accessible, and entertaining online format for his work.
Michael has a PhD in English Studies from Durham University, and his first book, Rethinking G.K. Chesterton and Literary Modernism: Parody, Performance, and Popular Culture, was published by Routledge in 2017. Michael can be contacted via Bluesky.
Links of interest
About Inscribing Pandemonium: https://inscribingpandemonium.wordpress.com/the-point/
G.K. Chesterton: https://www.chesterton.org/who-is-this-guy/
Kingsley Amis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsley_Amis
Lucky Jim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Jim
Evelyn Waugh: https://evelynwaughsociety.org/about-evelyn-waugh/
J.G. Ballard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._G._Ballard