An imaginative, somewhat idiosyncratic and richly layered examination of William Blake’s life, art, poetry and lasting influence, especially the impact he has had on writers, artists and thinkers down the ages to this day. Hoare offers the reader a deep and sometimes challenging exploration of the man and his work, a comprehensive evaluation which I found deeply interesting and thought-provoking. From Mary Shelley to Derek Jarman, from Paul Nash to Nancy Cunard, Blake’s reach has been considerable, and although I found Hoare’s digressive style required patience and concentration, and it’s certainly not a book that can be rushed, it’s one I found deeply rewarding, engaging and illuminating.

I can't really begin to describe this book. If anything it's more like an account of a man being haunted by William Blake and an exploration of other men who have been similarly afflicted. It has no real linear movement, no timeline and no adherence to anything much earthly except that the words are trapped inside the pages of a book. I have no problem with this. I think on balance that this is exactly the type of book Blake would approve of, although I am somewhat derailed by the idea of what he might have unleashed on the world via the power of TikTok were he alive today. I very much enjoyed the interludes spent in the company of Derek Jarman, Paul Nash and Gerard Manley Hopkins to name but a few of the fellow Blake devotees.

I feel rather washed up on the shore after a storm at sea having finally finished this book. I think it will stay with me in one aspect or another for a very long time.

A kaleidoscopic, dream-like foray into the art and poetry of William Blake, and a whole raft of artists who have taken inspiration from him over the years. Hoare's prose is as fluid and dense and changeable as the sea he uses as his central motif: it's compelling but I did wish he'd give me a chance to come up for air every now and then. Highly literary and rich in research, with a few too many meandering digressions, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love is a unique and bewitching read.

A wonderfully queer, idiosyncratic exploration of the life, work and influence of visionary artist and poet William Blake. Philip Hoare shies away from cradle-to-grave biography or dry academic assessment, instead his approach is lyrical, poetic, richly associative, sometimes digressive, perhaps even a little self-indulgent. Moving restlessly back and forth in time and space, Hoare traces connections between Blake and a veritable cavalcade of literary, artistic and activist figures including: Derek Jarman; artist Paul Nash; Nancy Cunard; Mary Butts; T. E. Lawrence; Denton Welch; Oscar Wilde; James Joyce; medium Hester Dowden; and Algernon Blackwood. There’s a fascinating account of the life of W. Graham Robertson, once set designer for Oscar Wilde, whose chance encounter with Blake’s work was to rescue it from falling into obscurity; an intriguing meditation on the links between Blake’s poetry, his fascination with the natural world, and Milton’s Paradise Lost. All tangled up with fragments of Hoare’s own memories, glimpses of his emotional states, his astonishment at the power of Blake’s images and imagery. There are passages that possess a kind of hypnotic, deranged beauty; the intimate and reflective jostling with the more routinely descriptive. It’s hard to know exactly how to convey the feel of Hoare’s book, as a writer he’s been dubbed Derek Jarman’s literary heir, not unreasonably. But there are hints here too of Robert Macfarlane, even a touch of Sebald, although far, far wilder. I can see this won’t be for everyone but I really loved it. Just glorious.