Or, the Whale

We continue to hold the future and the past of the whale in our hands. The greatest and the least. What is the nature of that vast (dis)connexion now, between human and sea beast? What happens when their culture - which predates ours by six million years - meets ours, which extends for the blink of a whale’s eye?

Drawing on art and science, dreams and trauma, Philip Hoare, a self-confessed whalehead, sums up the state of cetaceans now, and their talents for evasion, joy, and disguise. As Herman Melville said of his subject, after writing 136 chapters on it, ‘I know him not and never will’.

Philip Hoare is an internationally celebrated writer, film-maker and curator with roots in County Wicklow. Described by the New York Times as a ‘forceful weather system’ of his own, Hoare writes with an insatiable curiosity and fascination about the sea and his last book, Albert & the Whale was considered ‘a masterpiece’ by The Observer. Hoare’s eclectic style of biography, literary criticism, social history and nature writing is sure to captivate audiences. ‍

The evening includes a talk by Philip Hoare followed by a conversation with one of Ireland’s foremost film-makers, Alan Gilsenan.

‘Marvellous, unaccountable book. This is a book like the stomach of a whale: capaciously ready to accommodate whatever disparate stuff comes its way…’
Literary Review (Albert & the Whale)