New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
The New Bedford Whaling Museum will welcome author and cultural historian, Philip Hoare, on Wednesday, May 14, for a presentation on his latest book, The Sea Inside. The event will include a pre-lecture reception with a book signing and meet-and-greet with the author following the presentation.
Hoare is the author of six works of non-fiction. His latest book, The Sea Inside, will be published in the U.S. by Melville House this spring.
The Sea Inside
A love letter to the sea: part memoir, part travelogue, and part natural history; The Sea Inside is Hoare’s most personal book yet. He sets out on a year-long adventure to rediscover the sea, its islands, birds and beasts. The story begins at Hoare’s home near the U.K.’s Solent Strait and journeys on, roughly in the pattern of whales’ migration, to London, the Isle of Wight, the Azores, Sri Lanka, Tasmania, and New Zealand, in search of encounters with animals and people.
Rich with literary references and historical background, Hoare navigates between human and natural history, meeting scientists and tattooed warriors, and animals from whales to bizarre creatures that may or may not be extinct. Hoare describes encounters with our favorite sea mammals: swimming alone with hundreds of dolphins, he feels sonar pulse tick through his body; living on a boat, he learns to recognize individual voices in a whale pod and describes the tender call of mother to child. Like the works of W.G. Sebald and J.A. Baker, Hoare’s The Sea Inside takes the reader on an astounding journey of discovery.
Join Hoare on Wednesday, May 14, at 7 p.m. for a presentation of his new book. A pre-lecture reception will begin at 6:30 p.m. with a book signing and meet-and-greet taking place after the presentation. Admission is free for Museum Members and $10 for Non-Members. For more information or to purchase tickets, call (508) 997-0046 ext. 100 or visit http://www.whalingmuseum.org/programs/public-talk-with-philip-hoare.
About Philip Hoare
Philip Hoare (born 1958, Southampton) 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.
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 honorary doctorate in 2011. He is also co-curator, with Angela Cockayne, of the Moby-Dick Big Read, www.mobydickbigread.com.
