"Hell is a city much like London," the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once opined. Shelley's comparison may be questioned - and what would he think today? - but his interest in the topography of that infernal place below was shared by some of the world's greatest literary figures. For centuries, poets, novelists, playwrights, philosophers and other creative souls have dared to depict what things are like in the pit of eternal damnation. For some it was a scene of perpetual torment, a region of pain, suffering, and unending remorse. For George Bernard Shaw it was a place where "one has nothing to do but amuse oneself" - a merry hell, perhaps? Poets, we are told, are of "the Devil's party," (as Blake claimed about Milton) so they should certainly know. Artists ranging from Giotto, Van Eyck, Bosch and Munch to Jake & Dinos Chapman have all portrayed their personal visions of the fiery abyss.

So, come see what devilish entertainments are in store as Gary Lachman looks at the hells of Dante, Milton, Swedenborg, Blake, Shaw, Sartre, among others, on an illustrated sojourn through some literary underworlds.