‘Pandæmonium was the biggest single inspiration for the Olympics Opening Ceremony’ – Danny Boyle

Posted on 2012/09/14 , tagged as

Share this

We are excited to announce that Icon will be publishing a new edition of Pandæmonium 1660–1886: The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers, the book which inspired Danny Boyle’s Olympic Opening Ceremony, in October. 

Danny Boyle says that ‘Pandæmonium was the biggest single inspiration for the Olympics Opening Ceremony … the book is the equivalent of Pepys giving you a guided tour of the birth of electricity and the mechanical age – it’s brilliant, exciting and essential.’

Pandæmonium will also contain a new foreword by Frank Cottrell Boyce.

Humphrey Jennings, co-founder of the Mass Observation movement of the 1930s and acclaimed documentary film-maker, assembled this extraordinary history of how the human imagination experienced the Industrial Revolution, originally published in 1985.

Pandæmonium will be published on 4th October. Find out more about the book here and read publishing trade magazine The Bookseller’s story about it here.