Mike Jay is currently finishing a book on the Pneumatic Institution, the experimental gas laboratory in 1790s Bristol where the maverick doctor Thomas Beddoes explored the medical use of gases in collaboration with a circle that included the chemist Humphry Davy and the poets Coleridge and Southey. When they discovered the unexpected effects of inhaling nitrous oxide, the experiments devolved into a pioneering exploration of consciousness. The working title for the book is Wild Gas, and it’s due from Yale University Press in Spring 2009.

He has also been editing Medical London: City of Diseases, City of Cures, to be published this October - advance details here.

The film rights for The Air Loom Gang are under option with Lloyd Levin, who is currently filming Watchmen.