William Blake and The Sea Monsters of Love: How one visionary inspired two hundred years of art, poetry & protest

by Philip Hoare

On Sale: 04/29/2025

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William Blake and The Sea Monsters of Love: How one visionary inspired two hundred years of art, poetry & protest

by Philip Hoare

On Sale: 04/29/2025

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Amazon Indigo

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About the Book

Weaving between the historical, personal and cultural, award-winning author Philip Hoare reveals a web of creative minds and artistic iconoclasts fired with the revolutionary genius of William Blake.

In 1973, Derek Jarman set off from London to film the stones of Avebury. He was following in the footsteps of his hero, Paul Nash, who had photographed Dorset’s ancient megaliths a generation before. Both artists had an overarching guiding star for whom the mysterious site was a utopian dream of a better world – a visionary who had died long ago yet remained electrically alive to them.

In this alluring and strange poetic odyssey, Philip Hoare traces the vast and enduring legacy of William Blake. Reaching out of the past and far into the future, Blake’s work draws together the natural world and the metaphysical realms, launching his uproarious spirit into the lives of countless artists, filmmakers, poets, writers, musicians, eccentrics and rebels. That same spirit of protest and radicalism continues to inspire us today, with Blake’s promise of absolute freedom and the possibility of positive change.

Critical Praise

Praise for Philip Hoare:

‘Always original … Always pushing from somewhere new’ Olivia Laing

‘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

‘He is poetic and precise’ TLS

‘Hoare has wonderful, almost child-like relish for colourful stories and incredible facts … His passionate engagement will infect you’ The Times