Philip Hoare

Southampton, England, UK

Writer

Career[edit]

Hoare has written many articles on whales, including one on the orca 'attacks' off the Iberian Peninsula in 2023.[1] He has also recorded podcasts for NPR, VICE and Al Jazeera Media Network.[2] His curatorial work includes Derek Jarman's Modern Nature,[3] and he contributed to the Victoria and Albert Museum's international touring exhibition, David Bowie Is.[4]


As a writer, Hoare has represented the British Council in Berlin, Guadalajara, and Moscow.[5][6][7]


Hoare is Special Ambassador for Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Visiting Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, and lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.[8]

2009 Samuel Johnson Prize[edit]

Hoare was the winner of the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize, now known as the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, for his work Leviathan, or the Whale.[9] The book, which describes a personal and societal fascination with whales, met critical acclaim.[10][11] Jonathan Mirsky, writing for Literary Review called the book "tremendous".[12]

Serious Pleasures: The Life of (1990)

Stephen Tennant

: A Biography (1995)

Noël Coward

's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the First World War (1997)

Wilde

Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital (2000), the story of in Southampton

Netley Hospital

The Ghosts of Netley (2004)

England's Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005), about and the New Forest Shakers

Mary Anne Girling

Leviathan or, The Whale (2008), which won the 2009 for non-fiction

BBC Samuel Johnson Prize

The Whale: In Search Of The Giants Of The Sea (2010)

The Sea Inside (2013)

RisingTideFallingStar (2017)

Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World (2021)

[a]

Hoare is the author of 11 works of non-fiction:


He has also edited The Sayings of Noël Coward (1997).


Hoare has co-authored or contributed to the following publications:


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2008 profile

2005 profile

Moby Dick Big Read

The Whale blogsite