unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, works-in-progress or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please contact us via our website: https://unfinishing.co.uk/. My guest in this episode is Dr Michael Shallcross, who is a writer based in York, UK. Michael's unfinished project is called 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. If you liked this episode you can: 1. Give it a rating or a review: On Apple: tap on the podcast thumbnail (the logo), and scroll down to below the episodes until you find the ratings and reviews section. On Spotify: click on the three dots below the podcast art and title (next to settings), and select ‘Rate show’. 2. Check out the website and sign up to the unfinishing newsletter: https://unfinishing.co.uk/contact 3. Text it to a friend with this link: https://unfinishing.co.uk/episodes 4. Tag us in your social media posts! Instagram: @unfinishingpod Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/unfinishing.bsky.social Twitter: @TrueBagglerag Links of interest About Inscribing Pandemonium: https://inscribingpandemonium.wordpress.com/the-point/ G.K. Chesterton: https://www.chesterton.org/who-is-this-guy/ Butler Act: https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/educationact1944/ 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