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Philip Hoare is the author of six works of non-fiction: Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1990) and Noel Coward: A Biography (1995), Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the First World War (1997), Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital (2000), and England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005). Leviathan or, The Whale (2008), won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. Most recently, The Sea Inside (2013) was published to great critical acclaim. An experienced broadcaster, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three films for BBC’s Whale Night. He is Visiting Fellow at Southampton University, and Leverhulme Artist-in-residence at The Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honourary doctorate in 2011.
‘An impassioned magnum opus celebrating Blake's star-shaken genius by discovering his lineage everywhere in the author’s own crystal cabinet of artists and outlaws. A tremendous literary performance’ Iain Sinclair, author of The Last London ‘The life and legacy of a wild man. Hoare, the author of Albert and the Whale (2021), captures the singular genius of poet, artist, and visionary William Blake (1757-1827) in an exuberant romp through Blake’s life, times, and afterlife … he examines a Blakean universe replete with fairies and spirits, butterflies and stars, sacred monsters and hermaphrodites. Sometimes maddeningly digressive, Hoare’s history is, nonetheless, endearingly intimate. Abundantly illustrated. An imaginative response to an enigmatic artist’ Kirkus Review – Praise for Philip Hoare: ‘His writing [is] the animating magic that brings people of the past directly into our present and unleashes spectacular visions along the way’ Laura Cumming, Observer ‘Always original … Always pushing from somewhere new’ Olivia Laing ‘Hoare writes with a beautiful and liquid assurance, luxuriantly at home in this half-modernist, half-conventional medium and capable of astonishingly realised visions of floating moments and sea encounters’ Adam Nicholson ‘He is poetic and precise’ TLS ‘Hoare has wonderful, almost child-like relish for colourful stories and incredible facts … His passionate engagement will infect you’ The Times
