Albert & the Whale

Philip Hoare is the author of eight works of non-fiction, including Leviathan or, The Whale, which won the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. Hoare is also an experienced broadcaster, a Visiting Fellow at Southampton University, and Leverhulme Artist-in-residence at The Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honourary doctorate in 2011. He lives in Southampton.

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 Dürer 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 Dürer’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