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Philip Hoare (born Patrick Kevin Philip Moore, 1958) is a British writer, film-maker and curator.

Hoare's books are published in translation in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Brazil, and China ^[1]. They include Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant and the authorised biography of Noël Coward, both of which received front cover reviews in the New York Times Book Review ^[2].

Hoare subsequently wrote Wilde's Last Stand, England's Lost Eden, and Spike Island ^[3]. These were followed by Leviathan or, the Whale, winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize in 2009 ^[4].

The Sea Inside and RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR, the latter acclaimed as 'a masterpiece' by The Guardian ^[5], were both serialised as BBC Radio Books of the Week ^[6]. Whales featured in RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR, which blended travel, memoir and literary history. The Guardian described it as "a remarkable book... always rich and strange ^[7]."

Hoare's latest book, Albert & the Whale, led the New York Times to call the author a 'forceful weather system' of his own ^[8]. Musician Patti Smith declared it 'a wonderful book. A lyrical journey into the natural and unnatural world' ^[9]. Author Olivia Laing said, 'Everything that Philip Hoare writes is bewitching' ^[10].

Early life

Hoare was born in Southampton and attended St Mary's College.^{[11][citation needed]} He then studied at St Mary's University, Twickenham.^[11]

Career

In 1982, Hoare founded the independent, post-punk record label Operation Twilight with Rough Trade Records, a UK-based subsidiary of the Belgian label Les Disques du Crépuscule.^[11][12][13] The label produced 11 releases and launched the career of the Pale Fountains ^[14].

In 1999, Hoare co-curated Icons of Pop at the National Portrait Gallery, one of the institution's best-attended exhibitions ^{[15] [16]}.

Philip's broadcast work includes the feature-length BBC Two film, The Hunt for Moby-Dick (2008), and three films he directed for BBC Four's Whale Night ^[17]. Recent work includes "I was a dark star always" (2018) ^[18], an installation film about Wilfred Owen, voiced by Ben Whishaw, and the script for the BBC 2 film, Isostasy (2021) ^[19]. In 2022, he co-curated a major exhibition with the John Hansard Gallery on the artist and film-maker, Derek Jarman ^[20].

In 2009, he exhibited artworks made with artist Angela Cockayne at Viktor Wynd Fine Art Inc in London.^[21]

In 2016, working with the Arts Institute, University of Plymouth, Hoare co-curated, with Cockayne, the Moby Dick Big Read, for which the entirety of Melville's novel was read by Sir David Attenborough, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tony Kushner and Stephen Fry, among others ^[22]. In 2021, this was followed the Ancient Mariner Big Read, in which Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem was read by Iggy Pop, Hilary Mantel, Willem Dafoe, Jeanette Winterson, Rupert Everett, Ali Smith, Alan Bennett, Jeremy Irons, and Marianne Faithfull ^[23]. Both digital projects have received tens of millions of hits and international coverage ^[24].

Hoare is a regular contributor to The Guardian, for which he has written many articles on whales, including one on the orca 'attacks' off the Iberian Peninsula in 2023 ^[25]. He has also recorded podcasts for NPR, VICE and Al Jazeera ^[26]. His curatorial work includes Derek Jarman's Modern Nature ^[27]; and he contributed to the V&A's international touring exhibition, David Bowie Is ^[28].

As a writer, Hoare has also represented the British Council in Berlin, Guadalajara, and Moscow ^{[29] [30] [31]}.

Hoare has collaborated with John Waters ^[32], Pet Shop Boys ^[33] and the Black American artist Ellen Gallagher ^[34], and written catalogue essays for Peter Doig, Dorothy Cross, Linder, and Tania Kovats ^[35].

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 ^[36].

2009 Samuel Johnson Prize

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 ^[37]. The book, which charts a personal and societal fascination with whales, met critical acclaim ^{[38] [39]}. Jonathan Mirsky, writing for Literary Review, praised Hoare's poignancy and awe ("Whales defy gravity, occupy other dimensions; they live in a medium that would overwhelm us, and which far exceeds our earthly sway moving through a world we know nothing about"), as well as his ability to draw in the broader significance of whaling to the foundations of American capitalism ("it was as if the antediluvian beasts had to die in order to assert the modern world") ^[40].

Works

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

• Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1990)
• Noël 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), the story of Netley Hospital in Southampton
• The Ghosts of Netley (2004)
• England's Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005), about Mary Anne Girling and the New Forest Shakers
• Leviathan or, The Whale (2008), which won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction
• 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]

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

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

• Essay on the evolution of class in the UK in a British Council pamphlet, Posh: The Evolution of the Traditional British Brand (ed. Sorrel Hershberg, 1999).
• An essay in Linder: Works 1976–2006 (2006), a collection about Linder Sterling.
• Gabriel Orozco (2006), exhibition catalogue and texts, with Mark Godfrey.
• Pet Shop Boys (2006), catalogue and texts, with Chris Heath.
• Introduction to David Austen (2007) (eds. Emma Dean and Michael Stanley).
• Foreword to Made in Southampton (2008), a box-set of prints.
• Provenance (2010), with Angela Cockayne, a response to Wunderkammen.
• Essay, "Something against nothing", in Tania Kovats (2011) (ed. Jeremy Millar).
• Dominion: A Whale Symposium (2012) (eds. Hoare and Angela Cockayne).
• Essay in Malicious Damage: the Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton (2013), (ed. Ilsa Colsell).
• Essay in Southampton: A City Lost ... And Found (2013), a collection of drawings by Eric Meadus.
• Record of a discussion between Hoare, Christopher Frayling and Mark Kermode on David Bowie's cultural impact, in David Bowie is the subject (2013) (eds. Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh).
• Greetings from Darktown : an illustrator's miscellany, a collection of the work of Jonny Hannah, with texts by Hoare, Sheena Calvert and Peter Chrisp (2014).
• Foreword to As is the sea (2014), writing by students from the Royal College of Art (ed. Jessie Bond).
• Another Green World – Linn Botanic Gardens: Encounters with a Scottish Arcadia (2015), photographs by Alison Turnbull, text by Hoare.

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Notes

References

External links

• 2008 profile^{[dead link]}
• 2005 profile
• Moby Dick Big Read
• The Whale blogsite