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9780008323295

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Praise for Albert and the Whale 'Always original ... Always pushing from somewhere new' Olivia Laing 'In Albert & the Whale he leads his readers off on a marvellously varied, vividly imaginative, seductively digressive adventure that traces the path of another colossus... this is a book to immerse you' The Times, Book of the Week, Rachel Campell-Johnston 'Magnificent new book ... Hoare's feeling for Durer exceeds anything I have ever read ... his greatest work yet' Observer, Book of the Week, Laura Cumming 'Marvellous, unaccountable book. This is a book like the stomach of a whale: capaciously ready to accommodate whatever disparate stuff comes its way' Literary Review 'Philip Hoare, best know for Leviathan, his discursive and personal book about whales, has written a very Sebaldian new book. In it, he traverses his own patch and sniffs out an assortment of seemingly unrelated themes - Albrecht Durer, cetaceans, Thomas Mann and David Bowie, a deformation of the hand, the death of his mother - and proceeds to reveal the single degree of separation between them... Enlightening' Michael Prodger, Sunday Times 'Visionary: a tone poem put together from the lives of others, with detailed use of archives' Financial Times 'Mr Hoare's portrait glitters with arresting details ... His readings of Durer's work grow woozy with enthusiasm, dissolving into a kind of modernist poetry. Readers who prefer their art history to have both feet on the ground might be unmoored; others will be intoxicated' Economist 'It's a summary-defying blend of art history, biography, nature writing and memoir ... you can feel the delight he takes in being unbound by anything but his enthusiasms. He is alternately precise and concealing. His biographical sections are both elliptical and redolent of entire lives. His art criticism is often stirring' New York Times

Praise for Albert and the Whale 'In Albert & the Whale he leads his readers off on a marvellously varied, vividly imaginative, seductively digressive adventure that traces the path of another colossus... this is a book to immerse you' The Times, Book of the Week, Rachel Campell-Johnston 'Magnificent new book ... Hoare's feeling for Durer exceeds anything I have ever read ... his greatest work yet' Observer, Book of the Week, Laura Cumming Praise for RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR: 'Rarely have I read a book that felt as if it were speaking so directly, so confidentially to me. RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR is about books and about swimming, but most of all it does what all great books do: makes you feel that it's a private conversation between you and the author. I finished it with an obscure feeling of privilege, to have been granted such access to Hoare's most secret, intimate self ... RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR is a masterpiece' Alex Preston, Observer 'A rich and strange combination of memoir, travelogue and literary biography ... RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR contains much of wonder in words strewn across its pages like treasures revealed on the sand by a retreating tide' Caspar Henderson, Financial Times 'This is an exquisite read, stuffed with dark myths and eerie legends, nourished by the author's sublime gift for poetic description' Michael Simkins, Mail on Sunday 'Hoare conveys a redemptive sense of the wide, continuous and beautiful world, in a remarkable book that sometimes feels rather loosely fitted together, but is always rich and strange' Guardian '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, Spectator

Praise for RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR: 'Rarely have I read a book that felt as if it were speaking so directly, so confidentially to me. RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR is about books and about swimming, but most of all it does what all great books do: makes you feel that it's a private conversation between you and the author. I finished it with an obscure feeling of privilege, to have been granted such access to Hoare's most secret, intimate self ... RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR is a masterpiece' Alex Preston, Observer 'A rich and strange combination of memoir, travelogue and literary biography ... RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR contains much of wonder in words strewn across its pages like treasures revealed on the sand by a retreating tide' Caspar Henderson, Financial Times 'This is an exquisite read, stuffed with dark myths and eerie legends, nourished by the author's sublime gift for poetic description' Michael Simkins, Mail on Sunday 'Hoare conveys a redemptive sense of the wide, continuous and beautiful world, in a remarkable book that sometimes feels rather loosely fitted together, but is always rich and strange' Guardian 'His idiosyncratic tales of mariners, adventurers and the odd dilettante rise almost to the level of poetry ... he evokes the sense of majesty that a seascape can inspire in us' Clive Davis, The Times 'Wonderful ...This beautifully written book is a delight' BBC Radio 4 The themes and preoccupations are familiar from Hoare's previous writing ... but their revisiting here reveals a landscape as exhilarating different as that of the foreshore from one tide to the next' Jane Shilling, Evening Standard '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, Spectator

Praise for Albert and the Whale 'In Albert & the Whale he leads his readers off on a marvellously varied, vividly imaginative, seductively digressive adventure that traces the path of another colossus... this is a book to immerse you' The Times, Book of the Week, Rachel Campell-Johnston 'Magnificent new book ... Hoare's feeling for Durer exceeds anything I have ever read ... his greatest work yet' Observer, Book of the Week, Laura Cumming 'Marvellous, unaccountable book. This is a book like the stomach of a whale: capaciously ready to accommodate whatever disparate stuff comes its way... Hoare's modern encyclopedism also allows us to wallow in the book's fluidity, the unpredictability of which disrupts everything, transmuting whatever is steeped in it into something rich and strange' Literary Review

Praise for Albert and the Whale 'No reader will forget studying the 'Apocalypse', 'Melancolia,' the 'Angel', the rhino or the self-portraits in Hoare's company. Following him between them is deliberately dizzying ... Museums, cities and eras shimmer by like jewels tipped down a stairwell ... In Albert and the Whale Hoare moves beyond his own hand, which has hitherto brought hybrid biographies, memoirs and tremendous books on the sea and whales, to make something reckless, marvellous and unforgettable' New Statesman 'In Albert & the Whale he leads his readers off on a marvellously varied, vividly imaginative, seductively digressive adventure that traces the path of another colossus... this is a book to immerse you' The Times, Book of the Week, Rachel Campell-Johnston 'Magnificent new book ... Hoare's feeling for Durer exceeds anything I have ever read ... his greatest work yet' Observer, Book of the Week, Laura Cumming 'Marvellous, unaccountable book. This is a book like the stomach of a whale: capaciously ready to accommodate whatever disparate stuff comes its way... Hoare's modern encyclopedism also allows us to wallow in the book's fluidity, the unpredictability of which disrupts everything, transmuting whatever is steeped in it into something rich and strange' Literary Review 'Philip Hoare, best know for Leviathan, his discursive and personal book about whales, has written a very Sebaldian new book. In it, he traverses his own patch and sniffs out an assortment of seemingly unrelated themes - Albrecht Durer, cetaceans, Thomas Mann and David Bowie, a deformation of the hand, the death of his mother - and proceeds to reveal the single degree of separation between them... Enlightening' Michael Prodger, Sunday Times 'Visionary: a tone poem put together from the lives of others, with detailed use of archives' Financial Times

Author Information

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.

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