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.

‘A life-changing book’ The Times, Book of the Week

‘A poetic fever dream’Telegraph

‘Undoubtedly Hoare’s masterpiece’ Olivia Laing

‘Queer in all senses of the word’ Neil Tennant

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.

‘A book that is neither Blake biography nor critical analysis nor legacy-tracing nor personal odyssey but a capacious mixing of them all … a joyful and dizzying romp through the stories of those who came under Blake’s posthumous spell’ Philip Marsden,Spectator

‘Beneath the leaps and returns, the book is skilfully structured, following Blake’s life and art, and rendering all the inset lives complete, however discontinuous they appear … One can foresee a rush of books in the run-up to 2027, the bicentenary of Blake’s death, but nothing will be as audacious or intriguing as William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love’ Jenny Uglow, TLS

© 2025 Fourth Estate (Audiobook): 9780008534370

Release date

Audiobook: 10 April 2025