William Blake and The Sea Monsters of Love

How one visionary inspired 200 years of art, poetry, and protest...

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

'Undoubtedly Hoare's masterpiece' Olivia Laing

In 1973, Derek Jarman set off from London to film the stones of Avebury. He was following in the footsteps of Paul Nash, who had photographed the ancient megaliths a generation before. Standing in that muddy field, by those stones, both artists had felt a direct connection to their hero - a man who had died a long, long time ago, yet who remained electrically alive to them.

In this alluring and poetic odyssey, Philip Hoare traces the enduring legacy of William Blake and how he came to inspire so many creative lives. Reaching out of his past and into our future, Blake draws together the natural world and metaphysical realms, merging the human and the animal and the spiritual, firing up twentieth-century artists, filmmakers, poets, writers and musicians with his radical promise of absolute freedom. This stirring, deeply felt book brings us back to Blake and shows that art still has the power to create positive change.

This autobiography is a journey through time, tracing the footsteps of the best in the field of art and literature. It's a top pick for those interested in the history of English romanticism and the figures who shaped it.

For fans of Tom Holland (The Rest is History), Wallace J. Nichols (Surviving the Shark), Alice Vincent (Why Women Grow), Maggie O'Farrell (I Am, I Am, I Am), and Colm Toibin (The Master).

HarperCollins 2025