Philip Hoare’s books include Wilde’s Last Stand, England’s Lost Eden, and Spike Island. Leviathan or, The Whale won the Samuel Johnson Prize for 2009, and The Sea Inside was published in 2013. He is professor of creative writing at the University of Southampton, and co-curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read. His website is www.philiphoare.co.uk, and he is on Twitter @philipwhale.
It’s one long performance, one long evening shading into brilliant night.
Our obsession with creatures of flight, from Homer to Hamlet to Hitchcock.
Perhaps it is the octopus’s talent for trickery that has blinded us to its qualities.
From flying carpets to rocket men, we have always dreamed of defying gravity
A newly unearthed photograph identifies the African-American Trafalgar survivor who appears in Melville’s final novel. Could the book’s hero have been black, too?
Peter Ackroyd's gay history spans from the Romans to the present day.
Chief Engineer: the Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge tells the story of the father and son responsible for the epic project.
Three new “swimoirs” plumb the depths of the question.
Animals are our fellow travellers on this earth. It's time we heard what they have to say.
Laing’s book uses her own loneliness to consider a group of 20th-century figures who expressed their alienation through art.
