Podcast appearances and mentions of Philip Hoare

Philip Hoare is an award-winning writer whose books often describe the lure of the sea, the strange and beautiful creatures that live in it and the inspiration artists have found in its murky depths. His book Leviathan won the Samuel Johnson Prize: it drew on his lifelong obsession with whales, which began with the gigantic skeletons in the Natural History Museum and continued with his own encounters with them at sea. His most recent book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, traces Blake's enduring influence on numerous poets, writers, film-makers and musicians. He's also written about Noel Coward, the British socialite Stephen Tennant and the Netley Military Hospital on Spike Island, near Southampton. His musical choices including Prokofiev, Britten and Copland. Producer Clare Walker

In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Interview Podcast, Adam Biles welcomes Philip Hoare to the bookstore for a mesmerizing conversation about Hoare's latest book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love. With characteristic lyricism, Hoare explores the mystic intersections between Blake's visionary art and poetry and the siren call of the ocean. The discussion flows through queer longing, mythic imagery, and the enduring pull of nature and art. A haunting, moving, and often playful exchange—as unruly and evocative as the sea itself.Buy William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-moon-is-a-watery-star*Philip Hoare is the author of ten works of non-fiction. His Leviathan won the Baillie Gifford Prize, and the New York Times praised his last book, Albert &; the Whale, as the result of ‘the forceful weather system that is Hoare's imagination'. Writing in the Observer, Laura Cumming called his writing ‘the animating magic that brings people of the past directly into our present and unleashes spectacular visions along the way'. He lives in Southampton, on the south coast of England, and swims every day in the sea.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman's latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

¡Ballenas, Coyotes y Águilas Pescadoras! Carlos Daniel Couttolenc Lyle, es fundador de una agencia de ecoturismo en Guerrero Negro llamada The Californias Mx. Lo invité a Mezclas Abruptas porque con él vi y entré en contacto con la ballena gris en la Laguna Ojo de Liebre. En este episodio hablamos sobre su pueblo, su ranchito, al que ama tanto; hablamos sobre estar cerca de animales tan poderosos y las lecciones que nos dejan, así como el efecto que el desierto tiene en los seres humanos. En fin, es un episodio sobre lo increíble que es la Baja y lo increíble que es México. Sigue a Dani y a su agencia aquí: https://www.instagram.com/daniclyle/ https://www.instagram.com/thecalif.mx/ El libro que menciono es "The Whale" de Philip Hoare: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7085440-the-whale Sobre Mezclas Abruptas: En el DJ booth y en este podcast Susana Medina selecciona temas de manera minuciosa y los pone sobre la mesa abruptamente. En este podcast aprenderás de pizza, perros, música, salud mental, ilustración, alpinismo y una serie de nuevas obsesiones y fascinaciones que en algún momento te servirán de algo. @mezclasabruptas  https://www.instagram.com/mezclasabruptas/ https://twitter.com/mezclasabruptas  https://www.tiktok.com/@mezclasabruptas  YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MezclasAbruptas @suzyain https://www.instagram.com/suzyrain  https://twitter.com/suzyrain  https://www.tiktok.com/@suzyrain  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Excited to welcome Philip Hoare, COO of AtkinsRéalis, to The Sustainability Experts podcast!

As the year wraps up, we're looking back at ten of the episodes that defined our year at The Take. This originally aired on June 28. Off the Portuguese coast in the Strait of Gibraltar, a pod of orca whales has been ramming commuter boats and ripping off boat rudders. At least three sailboats have sunk in the past year. Now, it's happened again off the Shetland Islands, the first ever in that area. There've been more than 200 reports of these types of encounters since 2020. And if you've been scrolling through your social media feed you might be on “team orca” or “team yacht.” The possible explanations for why, though, aren't as clear cut as orcas wanting to take down billionaire boats.  In this episode:  Philip Hoare (@philipwhale), author and filmmaker Jeroen Hoekendijk (jeroen_hoekendijk), marine biologist, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research  Monika Wieland Shields, co-founder and director, Orca Behavior Institute Episode credits: This episode was produced by Chloe K. Li with Sonia Bhagat and our host Malika Bilal. Khaled Soltan fact-checked this episode. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik.  Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer. Alexandra Locke is The Take's executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube

In 1520 the artist Albrecht Dürer was on the run from the Plague and on the look-out for distraction when he heard that a huge whale had been beached on the coast of Zeeland. So he set off to see the astonishing creature for himself. In this beautifully-evoked episode the award-winning writing Philip Hoare takes us back to those consequential days in 1520. We catch sight of Dürer, the great master of the Northern Renaissance, as he searches for the whale. This, he realises, is his chance to make his greatest ever print. Philip Hoare is the author of nine works of non-fiction, including biographies of Stephen Tennant and Noël Coward, and the studies, Wilde's Last Stand and England's Lost Eden.  Spike Island was chosen by W.G. Sebald as his book of the year for 2001.  In 2009, Leviathan or, The Whale won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. It was followed in 2013 by The Sea Inside, and in 2017 by RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR.  His new book, Albert & the Whale led the New York Times to call the author a 'forceful weather system' of his own. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and co-curator, with Angela Cockayne, of the digital projects http://www.mobydickbigread.com/ and https://www.ancientmarinerbigread.com/ As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com. Show notes Scene One: Nuremberg, home of Albrecht Dürer, at the height of its power as an imperial city, of art and technology. Scene Two: The Low Countries. Driven out of Nuremberg by the plague and a city in lockdown, Dürer escapes to the seaside. Scene Three: Halfway through his year away, Dürer hears a whale has been stranded in Zeeland.  This is his chance to make his greatest print, a follow up to his hit woodcut of a rhinoceros.  What follows next is near disaster, a mortal act.  It changes his life. Memento: Memento: A lock of Dürer's hair (which Hoare would use to regenerate him and then get him to paint his portrait) People/Social Presenter: Violet Moller Guest: Philip Hoare Production: Maria Nolan Podcast partner: Colorgraph Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_ Or on Facebook See where 1520 fits on our Timeline 

Since May 2020, there have been hundreds of reports of orcas interacting with boats in the strait of Gibraltar. Philip Hoare reports. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Off the Portuguese coast in the Strait of Gibraltar, a pod of orca whales has been ramming commuter boats and ripping off boat rudders. At least three sailboats have sunk in the past year. Now, it's happened again off the Shetland Islands, the first ever in that area. There've been more than 200 reports of these types of encounters since 2020. And if you've been scrolling through your social media feed you might be on “team orca” or “team yacht.” The possible explanations for why, though, aren't as clear cut as orcas wanting to take down billionaire boats.  In this episode:  Philip Hoare (@philipwhale), author and filmmaker Jeroen Hoekendijk (jeroen_hoekendijk), marine biologist, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research  Monika Wieland Shields, co-founder and director, Orca Behavior Institute Episode credits: This episode was produced by Chloe K. Li with Sonia Bhagat and our host Malika Bilal. Khaled Soltan fact-checked this episode. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik.  Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer. Alexandra Locke is The Take's executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

So how do you link fronting a band playing to an audience of over 5,000 people with Singapore National Service, social housing in the UK and founding a tech company for social good?  Well, today I talk with Ranjit Ghoshal, who is the CEO and founder of Million Steps and if you listen to the interview, he'll cover all of those links and explain what I'm talking about.  He's clearly very passionate about what he does. And he lives by a phrase that his grandfather said to him when Ranjit was around about seven years old, and he's remembered that phrase all of these years and still lives by it.  And I certainly want you to listen out for some of the mistakes that Ranjit admits he made at the start when setting up a tech company, for example, with a tech team and some of the things that he would do differently. Many of the things that Ranjit points to are around the execution side of the business and you might like to benchmark your execution habits against our scorecard and the link for that is in the in the show notes. So let's go across and listen to Ranjit story. https://executionhabits.scoreapp.com   Ranjit can be found here: linkedin.com/in/ranjitghoshal https://millionsteps.com/ info@millionsteps.com   Resources The Tragedy of Pudd nhead Wilson by Mark Twain - https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-tragedy-of-pudd-nhead-wilson/mark-twain/9781438530123   The Lean Startup by Eric Ries - https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-lean-startup/eric-ries/9780670921607   The Leviathan by Philip Hoare - https://www.waterstones.com/book/leviathan/philip-hoare/9780007230143   Scaling up your business isn't easy, and can be a little daunting. Let ScaleUp Radio make it a little easier for you. With guests who have been where you are now, and can offer their thoughts and advice on several aspects of business. ScaleUp Radio is the business podcast you've been waiting for.   If you would like to be a guest on ScaleUp Radio, please click here: https://bizsmarts.co.uk/scaleupradio/apply   You can get in touch with Kevin here: kevin@biz-smart.co.uk   Kevin's Latest Book Is Available!    Drawing on BizSmart's own research and experiences of working with hundreds of owner-managers, Kevin Brentexplores the key reasons why most organisations do not scale and how the challenges change as they reach different milestones on the ScaleUp Journey. He then details a practical step by step guide to successfully navigate between the milestones in the form of ESUS - a proven system for entrepreneurs to scale up.    More on the Book HERE - https://www.esusgroup.co.uk/

David Rothenberg is a writer, philosopher, ecologist, and musician, speaking out for nature in all aspects of his diverse work. He investigates the musicality of animals and the role of nature in philosophy, with a particular interest in understanding other species by making music with them. As a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, he “teaches engineers nonquantifiable things.” He is also an acclaimed composer and jazz clarinetist known for his integration of world music with improvisation and electronics. Originally intending to be a scientist, music pulled Rothenberg away during his high school years – ultimately becoming the modality through which he would explore nature and deep ecology. Looking back at those high school years of the 1970s, Rothenberg told The New York Times, "I was influenced by saxophonist Paul Winter's Common Ground album, which had his own compositions with whale and bird sounds mixed in. That got me interested in using music to learn more about the natural world." As an undergraduate at Harvard, Rothenberg created his own major to combine music with communication. He traveled in Europe after graduation, playing jazz clarinet. Listening to the recorded song of a hermit thrush, he heard structure that reminded him of a Miles Davis solo. Because of Rothenberg's study of animal song and his experimental interactions with animal music, he is often called an "interspecies musician." He is said to "explore the sounds of all manner of living things as both an environmental philosopher and jazz musician." Rothenberg's book Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song (Basic Books 2005) was inspired by an impromptu duet in March 2000 with a laughingthrush at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. A CD accompanying the book also featured Rothenberg's duet with an Australian lyrebird. The book served as the basis for a 2006 feature-length BBC documentary of the same name. His next book, Thousand Mile Song (Basic Books 2008), reflects similar curiosity about whale sounds considered as music, from which both scientific and artistic insights emerge. It was turned into a film for French television. Philip Hoare of The London Telegraph said of the book, "while Rothenberg's madcap mission to play jazz to the whales seems as crazy as Captain Ahab's demented hunt for the great White Whale, it is sometimes such obsessions that reveal inner truths...I find myself more than a little sympathetic to the author's faintly bonkers but undoubtedly stimulating intent: to push at the barriers between human history and natural history." His book Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science and  Evolution (Bloomsbury Press 2011) was described by the journal Nature as exploring the theme that beauty is not random but is intrinsic to life—and that evolution proceeds by sumptuousness, not by utility alone.  His remarkable output in books is matched by his creative output in other areas. As a composer and jazz clarinetist, Rothenberg has sixteen CDs out under his own name over the past 30 years. His 2020 releases include In the Wake of Memories and They Say Humans Exist, named best jazz album of the year by Stereo+ Magazine in Norway. He has performed or recorded with Peter Gabriel, Pauline Oliveros, Ray Phiri and Suzanne Vega. As a musician, Rothenberg tries to blend the indigenous energy of the world's primal music with the exploratory spirit of improvisation. He has studied jazz clarinet professionally, as well as Tibetan ritual wind music in Nepal and folk music in Norway. Since 2014, Rothenberg has been an Ambassador of the international non-governmental humanitarian mission, the Dolphin Embassy, participating in non-invasive research of the possibilities of free dolphins and whales – playing music for them. In 2017, the Dolphin Embassy released the full-length documentary Intraterrestrial, which received awards from international film festivals. The film's soundtrack features music by Rothenberg. Links to his extensive work, global press coverage, and extended recognition can be found on his website. Please join us in conversation with this remarkable philosopher and interspecies musician who combines art and science to make nature come alive in remarkable ways!

Philip Hoare is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton and an acclaimed author in his own right. Philip's latest book, entitled Albert and the Whale, is an exploration and celebration of the lengths to which Dürer went in the pursuit of the wonders of nature. He speaks to Dr. Richard Collins.

Now published for the very first time, Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping (House Sparrow Press) is Derek Jarman's only piece of narrative fiction. Somewhere between a fairytale, acid trip and road movie, the work lays the foundations for many of the themes and styles that characterise Jarman's work in film, painting and design.Joining host So Mayer, author of A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing (Peninsula), to explore the book were writer Philip Hoare, Jarman scholar Declan Wiffen and artist Michael Ginsborg. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join 5x15 for a thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication with Tom Mustill, author of the ground-breaking new book How to Speak Whale and Lucy Jones author of Losing Eden. How could breakthroughs in science change our relationship with animals forever? In 2015, wildlife filmmaker Tom Mustill was whale watching when a humpback breached onto his kayak and nearly killed him. After a VIDEO CLIP of the event went viral, Tom found himself inundated with theories about what happened. He became obsessed with trying to find out what the whale had been thinking and sometimes wished he could just ask it. In the process of making a film about his experience, he discovered that might not be such a crazy idea. In this special event, Tom tell's the story of the pioneers in a new age of discovery, whose cutting-edge developments in natural science and technology are taking us to the brink of decoding animal communication – and whales, with their giant mammalian brains and sophisticated vocalisations, offer one of the most realistic opportunities for us to do so. Using ‘underwater ears,' robotic fish, big data and machine intelligence, leading scientists and tech-entrepreneurs across the world are working to turn the fantasy of Dr Dolittle into a reality, upending much of what we know about these mysterious creatures. But what would it mean if we were to make contact? And with climate change threatening ever more species with extinction, would doing so alter our approach to the natural world? Enormously original and hugely entertaining, How to Speak Whale is an unforgettable look at how close we truly are to communicating with another species – and how doing so might change our world beyond recognition. Tom Mustill is a biologist turned filmmaker and writer, specializing in stories where people and nature meet. His film collaborations, many with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, have received numerous international awards, including two Webbys, a BAFTA, and an Emmy nomination. They have been played at the UN and COP 26, and been shared by heads of state, the World Health Organization, and Guns N' Roses. He lives in London with his wife Annie, daughter Stella and the inhabitants of his small but surprisingly deep pond. Lucy Jones is a writer and journalist based in Hampshire, England. She previously worked at NME and the Daily Telegraph, and her writing on culture, science and nature has been published in BBC Earth, BBC Wildlife, The Sunday Times, the Guardian and the New Statesman. Her first book, Foxes Unearthed, was celebrated for its 'brave, bold and honest' (Chris Packham) account of our relationship with the fox. Losing Eden took Jones from forest schools in East London to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault via primeval woodlands, Californian laboratories and ecotherapists' couches. Praise for How To Speak Whale ‘We rarely pause to consider what animals think or feel, or question whether their inner lives resemble our own. Tom Mustill's fascinating and deeply humane book shows us why we must do so – and what we, and the planet, could stand to gain by it' Greta Thunberg ‘A rich, fascinating, brilliant book that opens our eyes and ears to worlds we can scarcely imagine' George Monbiot, Sunday Times bestselling author of Regenesis 'Scary, important and brilliant' Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan 'Extraordinary' Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and co-author of The Future We Choose With thanks for your support for 5x15 online. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

An interview with Philip Hoare

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor NumbersIf you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends October 1st 2022. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://www.hrp.org.uk/https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-londonhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cate-milton-585a8613/https://superbloom.hrp.org.uk/content/ticket-options Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world.In today's episode, I speak with Cate Milton, Customer Experience Programme Officer at Historic Royal Palaces. Cate shares her infectious passion for customer experience and talks us through the six-month customer journey mapping exercise they carried out with KPMG. If you like what you hear, subscribe on all the user channels by searching Skip the Queue.Kelly Molson: Cate, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm really excited to speak to you.Cate Milton: Thank you so much. I'm really just as excited to speak about anything that's customer experience. So I'm excited.Kelly Molson: It's going to be a good chat, then. But first of all, I have to ask you some icebreaker questions, so we don't get to chat about customer experience quite yet. I'm going to ask you what your favourite breakfast food is.Cate Milton: Oh my God, that's a curve ball. I don't really do breakfast.Kelly Molson: Oh.Cate Milton: I get up in the morning and I feel it's way too early for my stomach to be dealing with anything like food, so I think if I'm being good, then it's usually a yogurt or some raisins. That makes me sound a lot healthier than I am.Kelly Molson: My goodness, doesn't it?Cate Milton: I mean, today it was a blueberry muffin, so it pretty much depends what's nearby. Yesterday, it was Cheeselets. So yeah, I hope my mum doesn't listen. Her main fear of me is that I'm not eating properly, and I just proved her correct there on breakfast.Kelly Molson: Oh yeah, well, listen to this though. Although, I would say that Cheeselets are an extremely tasty breakfast, so why not?Cate Milton: Honestly, I'm addicted, and now they're coming out in the picnic boxes and every time this year my entire family's like, "Find them. Stock up." Find them for me. But yeah, it's maybe not the most nutritious start to the day, but there we go.Kelly Molson: All right. Cheeselets or yogurt and raisins.Cate Milton: Yeah, not all together. Not all together, just-Kelly Molson: A balanced breakfast. Okay. What show on Netflix did you binge-watch embarrassingly fast? Cate Milton: Oh, that's a good question. So, my absolute favourite one... I got obsessed with it during lockdown like everybody else did when there was nothing else to do... was Mindhunter. So, it's kind of about the beginning of the FBI. So, anything with that kind of psychological twist. I mean, I am the cliche millennial in the true crime and I'm there like, "Oh, what's wrong with all these people?" But, Mindhunter was so good. I think they only did a couple of series and they keep kind of promising maybe a third, but nothing yet. But yeah, I did that in about two or three days... But there was nothing else to do. Everyone go watch it. Maybe if everyone watches it, then maybe they will make a third series. But yeah, the beginning of the FBI and all that kind of profiling and where all that came from.Kelly Molson: This is on my list, because I like a little true crime-Cate Milton: Oh, amazing.Kelly Molson: ... series as well. So that is on our list to watch, so I'm really glad that you recommended that, because I wasn't quite sure.Cate Milton: So good. And Jonathan Groff is in it, because he also plays the King in Hamilton. So it's really strange seeing him do this. I think he's known for musical theatre a bit more, and then in this kind of really straight role about kind of creating that psychological profiling of kind of the worst that humanity has to offer, yeah, he's amazing. But yes, watch it, put it to the top of your list. Definitely.Kelly Molson: I will do that. Third and final icebreaker question: if money and time were no object, what would you be doing right now?Cate Milton: Traveling, 100%. But that's misleading. I'm not ever going to pretend I'm the kind of traveler with a rucksack. I need something on wheels, so I would be going places with the suitcases, not having to worry about what the cheapest airport transfer is, how to get places. I would be having a lovely time. I'd never see winter again, definitely. I'm not a winter person. I'm loving the sun. So yeah, from a very selfish point of view, rather than trying to fix the rest of the world, I would be just following the sun all year round, having a lovely time.Kelly Molson: That's fine. It's your money, it's your time, you do whatever you want with it.Cate Milton: I would also donate to charity and save the whales.Kelly Molson: Saved it. Now that was a classic millennial answer.Cate Milton: Okay, yeah.Kelly Molson: All right, Cate, what is your unpopular opinion? What have you got for us?Cate Milton: I feel like this is quite unpopular. I'm also a little bit worried that if I say it that anyone listening straight away going to be like, "Well, she has no idea what she's talking about, so I'm not going to listen to the rest of this."Kelly Molson: Don't worry. Honestly, there's been some real shockers on here. You'll be good.Cate Milton: So, my unpopular opinion is that I think that tea, coffee, and alcohol are the most disgusting things on the planet. I do not understand how so much of this country is powered by one of those three things. I can't stand the taste of any of them, so I have lived my life without any of them. Maybe it's more I've got the taste palette of a child, although there's also a possibility I'm a super taster, so I'm just very sensitive and that's probably a superpower. So actually, it's all you guys that are wrong. I've just evolved out of the universe.Kelly Molson: I love this, but this is how you look so fresh-faced as well, because you don't drink the coffee-Cate Milton: Well, I don't know.Kelly Molson: ... and you don't drink the alcohol. So we are in the wrong.Cate Milton: It helps more in the money point of view, I'm not going to lie. That definitely makes a night out cheaper, but no, any fresh-facedness is down to my very complex skincare regime that I developed over the lockdown, so that's where all the money goes instead.Kelly Molson: Okay. Not enough care days. Right, listeners, tell us how you feel about Cate's unpopular opinion. Yeah, it's an interesting one. My husband's actually teetotal at the moment. He's just gone off the alcohol. Just doesn't like the effects that it leaves him with. It really affects his mood. So yeah, he's just cut it out and it's quite liberating really, isn't it?Cate Milton: Honestly, too, I've had it all the way through, so it made uni quite difficult because as soon as anyone will meet you the first question you're having to answer is, "Why don't you drink?" But definitely in the last kind of five years or so it's not a question I get so much anymore. It's just say, "Oh, okay then." So, I think there is a general trend in people... for whatever reason. There's a whole range of reasons, like trying not to drink for a little while or deciding they don't want that in their lives anymore. It's a lot more common. So, I don't have to answer that question so often because the next bit was always, "It's okay. I've got something that you'll love."Kelly Molson: But it shouldn't be a question, should it? It's just, "I don't drink." Okay.Cate Milton: How it is. I can just about manage the super sweet, if it's really sweet. So just a lot of sugar, then I can just about nurse one cocktail for about... But it will take me six hours or so to drink it. It's not something that I enjoy and it goes down nice and smooth. So yeah, unless somebody's bought it for me because they're being nice, it's not something that I partake in most of the time.Kelly Molson: Then there's the guilt of having to drink it, I guess.Cate Milton: Yeah, exactly. I'm just there sipping like, "Yeah, no, I don't need another one. This is really nice. Thank you."Kelly Molson: Okay. Right, tell us how you feel. I don't think that's too unpopular at all, Cate. Cate, you are the Customer Experience Programme Officer at Historic Royal Palaces.Cate Milton: Yes.Kelly Molson: I want to know about this role. Tell us what it involves because I'm guessing very broad.Cate Milton: Yes, you could say that. So, yeah. So I work for Historical Palaces. I actually work across all six sites. So, I'm based at the Tower. The Tower is my home and I've got the most experience in the Tower, because I originally started in Heritage, in Operations at the Tower of London. But now yeah, I work across the Tower, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court, Banqueting House, Kew Palace, and as well as Hillsborough Castle over in Northern Ireland. So yeah, I'm kind of there looking across customer experience and initiatives across those sites, trying to make sure that we've kind of got that one standard for HRP and what customer experience means, customer service means from an HRP point of view.Cate Milton: So yeah, it is quite broad. It's anything from kind of creating our customer service standard that I did with colleagues in Operations, goodness, two years ago now, I think, just before we reopened from the first lockdown, right up to more strategic things about where we need to aim for, where we need to focus our attention, having a look at a lot of customer journeys and understanding the end-to-end journey for all our sites.Cate Milton: I am the only one in my department. I am a department all by myself, so there's a lot of advocating for what customer journeys mean and joining up bits of the organisation. Not entirely by myself: I have the support of my visitor experience group, which is our operations directors, our public engagement, director and our commercial director, and all the op scenes across the site, too. I think in Operations you know how complex the journey is, you see the whole thing. So I think they're the teams I work most closely with; as well as overseeing things that are related to visitor feedback.Cate Milton: So, there's so much data. We have so much information on our visitors and what they think, what they feel, what their expectations are. So there's a little kind of work with our customer insight manager about how we best collate that, use it, spot the trends. So yeah, and also I just get deployed, really, to any kind projects that might need... Yeah, I suppose a little focus on customer experience, and I pipe up with annoying things like, "That's not customer journey-"Kelly Molson: Not thought about this.Cate Milton: "... So can we not do that." Yeah. I'm so lucky I get to get involved in basically anything that needs that kind of customer focus, which, in a visitor attraction, is nearly everything. So, it's an amazing role and, yeah, in a great place.Kelly Molson: What a job. What a job.Cate Milton: I landed on my finger this one. It's not too bad.Kelly Molson: Well, I mean, firstly: they are not terrible places to go to work every day, are they? I mean, what a place.Cate Milton: It ruins you for life though, because if anyone says to me now that you have to go to work in an old office block, it's very much, "Yeah, so where's the armed guard outside the office door? How many draw bridges do I have to go over? How many portcullises are there to go under? None? Okay, no. Well that's boring, isn't it?"Kelly Molson: It's not for me, then.Cate Milton: Exactly. Like it's, I say, "I'm sorry. I'm a palace-only person these days." But no, honestly, it's absolutely stunning. And actually, the previous governor who worked here, who kind of gave my first chance at the tower... So he's been very much a mentor to me, but I always remember him saying that, "If you ever come to work one day and you're not just awed by where you are, then it's time to leave and let somebody else come in, because you should just never forget the sites you're working at and the kind of connection to history that they've got." Yeah, I still, I still get the kind of, "Oh my God, the White Tower." It's still absolutely... I've been here coming here on and off eight years, with different roles and everything, and I still don't get over it.Kelly Molson: That's amazing. So you still get the goosebumps, you still get the-Cate Milton: Oh, completely, completely. You just walk under an archway and there are little faces carved into the arch, and they've seen every monarch since Henry III. Every single monarch we've had, like some of the biggest events in world history, have happened within these walls or at Hampton Court with Henry VIII, or Banqueting House. Charles the First was executed outside Banqueting House. So, some real key history where it happened moments have happened at our sites, and it's amazing that we get to kind of invite people in to share those stories.Kelly Molson: Well, how did you get... because you said that this, you've really landed on your feet. This is a dream role.Cate Milton: Yeah.Kelly Molson: What did you study beforehand to bring into this role?Cate Milton: So, I started... uni-wise, I did English and history degree, and then, because I graduated in the last recession, so I ended up working in schools in Essex and as a PA, and at the time, honestly, that's all I wanted to be. I was just like, I'm happy being a PA. I like organising things." It's a brilliant job if you like organising you, just sitting there really understanding nuts and bolts of things. And then I saw the PA job advertised for the governor of the Tower of London, and the Tower has been, honestly, my favourite place in the world since I was about five or six. I have a picture my grandmother took of me at the gates, kind of just like, "Let me in, let me in."Cate Milton: So getting it was a complete, complete dream come true, but I got it based on the fact I just sat there and said, "Yeah, I just want to be a PA. That's my dream. I just want to be a PA. I've got no other aspirations." But within nine months I had made the most of an opportunity to move into Ops, and then from then on I was just like, "This is what I should do. I love making stuff happen, I love working here, I love heritage. This fits who I am. This is what I want to do." So, I was there for a little bit. I was lucky enough to run an event called The Constable's Installation.Cate Milton: So, every four or five years, the Queen nominates her representative at The Tower of London, which is known as the Constable of the Tower. We've had one since 1078, so it's not a position that many people have had. And we had this big ceremony that the Lord Chamberlain comes to to install the Constable, and I was fortunate enough to be the first woman and the first civilian to run that installation in 2016.Kelly Molson: Gosh.Cate Milton: And I mean, it's still one of the best days of my life, but I peaked really, really early. I peaked at 28. That's it now, it's all downhill for now on. But doing that mix of operations and big ceremonies and events, I was kind of pinched by English Heritage to be their event manager for a couple of years, actually working with Lucy Hutchings, who I've then been working with at Hampton Court-Kelly Molson: Oh, lovely.Cate Milton: That's been really nice. Yeah. And then, I kept an eye on what was happening at HRP, because it was very much like... English Heritage is an absolutely fantastic organisation, but I'm very London-centric, so yeah, when this role came up I had the right combination of, "I've been in Ops, I've been on the front line. I understand, I care about what that experience looks like." So yeah, I applied for the role and the mothership called me home and I came back to the Tower.Kelly Molson: Oh, goodness. That's so amazing.Cate Milton: Yeah. So, I've had a lovely time the last eight years. I've been very lucky.Kelly Molson: Yeah.Cate Milton: I've been here for the last four, and it's been such a learning curve, because we originally started with a programme called [inaudible 00:14:47] and Distinctive, which is around customer experience and that's now become a little bit more kind of business as usual. But I've learnt so, so much in the last four years and really cemented that customer experiences is the bit I love the most, that I really want to do.Kelly Molson: Oh. You've left the PA dreams. You've left them behind.Cate Milton: I know. Yeah, they've fallen by the wayside a little bit and then now it's just like, I want to run things.Kelly Molson: Bigger dreams. Cate Milton: Exactly.Kelly Molson: Bigger dreams.Cate Milton: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: There's a lot... I've got so many questions for you based on what you just talked through, but we spoke a couple of weeks ago and you talked to me about the customer journey mapping exercise that you went on with KPMG, and I was really interested in this because it is really... It's similar to what we do in digital. So, we look at user journeys and we plot out where people are going to go on the site and what journeys we want to take them on, and it sounds very similar, but obviously it's in the real world. And I wanted to get you to talk that through. Tell us how you go about that. What was the need for it, to start with?Cate Milton: Yeah. So, customer journey mapping is such a vital tool for understanding the entire end-to-end journey for your customers. For example, at HRP sites we had departments who are kind of looking after individual touchpoints of our customer journey, particularly on site. But, in order to make the journey as seamless as possible and to be the best possible experience, it's essential that all of those touchpoints link together beautifully and they don't kind of jar that one department wants to do things this way and another does it this way, and... It just gets a bit jarring to go through that journey.Cate Milton: So, the customer experience overall suffers a little bit. But when you're looking at customer journey map, it really gives you that picture of this is where our customer starts, and this is the kind of thing that they're feeling, these are emotions, this is what their expectations are, and then takes you through every single touchpoint, right until the end, which is in, our case, they've gone offsite. What kind of post-visit relationship do we have with them after that?Cate Milton: So, for us it was very much the ambition to visualise that, to map that out, to get a, I suppose like a Bible of customer experience where everything is in that one place, so we can all be working to the same document, we can all understand the same thing, have the same vision, and really start kind of picking out those areas that we could focus on to improve what is... don't get me wrong... already an excellent visitor experience. We are some of the most amazing sites, some of the most amazing front-of-house teams. So it's going from good to great, rather than, "Oh my God, this is horrendous. We need to fix this."Cate Milton: So it's just where those little areas are that we could push ourselves kind of up a little bit more. So yeah, we got the help of KPMG to do that, because it was, it was not an approach that HRP had had done previously, so we needed that kind of outside consultancy, advice on how to go about that. And yeah, we worked with them on the processing of gathering all the information, the data and insight that we had, which was a mammoth task. We have a lot. We have all sorts of kind of surveys that are done about different exhibitions, or exit surveys. We have the ALVA benchmarking. There's so much information that we have just dotted around at different places, so trying to bring that all together to understand the picture that our visitors have been telling us, the information is there: what they want to see, what their expectations are, motivations, what they need on site. So, it's all that information.Cate Milton: We also ran workshops and did service safari. So, that is essentially taking a cross-palace team and kind of giving them a role for the day, giving them a persona. So, for example, you're the Walker family today. So, get your mind... We did some empathy mapping to really get people's minds into, "I'm a family. I've got a young child and a slightly old child, what do I need? Have I got buggy? Have I got to take things, am I going to need changing rooms?" All those kind of considerations. So, we gave people different personas so they could really kind of connect with some of our general groups of visitors. This is one of the frustrations, because you can't cover everybody. You do have to be very general, and there are going to be gaps in that, but some of that you can kind of cover off later. But yes, we did these service safaris and got our teams to do a visit, and to start looking at things from a visitor's point of view.Kelly Molson: That's so interesting. So, it is your own internal team that you take through this process?Cate Milton: Exactly, exactly. And it was always important to make sure that we had other members of staff who aren't used to that particular site. So, with KPMG we did Kensington and Tower of London, and it's one of those things with the best one in the world: you get blindness with your own site, because you see things day after day, you know what you're trying to focus on, what you're trying to improve, but sometimes you just stop seeing some of the things; stop seeing through the trees kind of thing. So, it's really helpful to get those other members of staff that aren't there every single day, and it's fascinating what comes out, and it's so useful for members of staff to really see like, "Oh yeah, why are we expecting us to do that?" Or, "That's actually quite difficult. Why are we doing it like that?"Cate Milton: It's so useful, and honestly, I mean, even if it's not a process, the customer data mapping is not a process that other organisations want to go through, I completely recommend doing service safaris. It really opens people's eyes. But we also had a lot of kind of one-to-one conversations with members of staff from across the organisation, and one of the most important groups in that was front of house. Visitor feedback is essential in understanding what our visitors want, and their opinions on stuff, but a lot of stuff that we got, for example, in our CRM, where visitors have contacted our contact centre, that's either the stuff that they absolutely love and is amazing or the stuff that's really upset them.Cate Milton: There's a massive gap in the middle there that our front of house team see every day in terms of minor irritations. It puts friction in, but it's not enough for someone to complain about. We need to look at that stuff as well. That's the everyday stuff that just jars with you a little bit. You just think, "Oh, that was a bit rubbish." And that stays in you. It might not be that's something you want to complain about later on, but it's still that you're going to go to friends and sort of say, "Yeah, it was good. I mean, this bit was a bit annoying."Cate Milton: So, it's so important to engage front of house teams to kind of have spies on the ground, to know what they're always asked about, to know the visitors always go the wrong way in this bit. Is it clear what room they're in? Is it clear where the toilets are, if the map's okay? So, we did quite a bit of work about talking to those guys, as well. And it's just kin of collating all of this data that everybody's got. It's just a matter of putting it together and, yeah, putting it into this, this tool that shows you what's happening at at each touchpoint. The most valuable thing, I think, the snapshot that comes from it, is the emotional journey of the customer.Cate Milton: So, obviously what you want in an ideal world is that they come in feeling okay and they leave thinking, "This is the most amazing thing. That was great. I loved every connection I had with that organisation." And that's what you're aspiring to, as well as everything nice and green and happy in the middle. But, that emotional journey graph really gives you a snapshot of, "Oh, okay. Well, things are dropping a little bit here. What going wrong here, or what can we improve here, or how has something earlier on not set this up properly? And if we fix this, is this going to effect later on?" So, it's such a valuable tool to really get that idea of what our visitors, what our customers are actually going through.Kelly Molson: That's epic though, isn't it? I mean, the amount of information that you need to have for that, and to do it really well, too. How long does a process like that take?Cate Milton: So, in terms of the data we already had, obviously we were talking kind of years of data. Customer journey mapping, you could either do it as a snapshot of the current state, or you can be a bit more aspirational and do it as a snapshot of kind of where you want to get to. It's most useful, really, to kind of have a combination of... to have two. But yeah, for us it was doing an in-depth audit of all the bits of information we had, making sure that KPMG had access to that, and we went through it with them about what this means, what this doesn't. There's also that kind of complication of, well, something exceptional happening three years ago. That means that's skewed that data a little bit.Kelly Molson: Right.Cate Milton: So what can we look into that is the kind of justification. So, for example, if our ticketing system had a blip and we get loads of complaints about that, we know that, we've solved that, and we don't need to worry too much about that, but we maybe need to record it's annoying if the ticking system has a moment. But overall, I mean, it took us maybe about six months to do with KPMG and kind of getting through all these stages of looking at the visitor staff, looking at the employee staff, looking at which departments feed into which parts, and also just identifying all the touch points. I think we've ended up with something around 70 to 80 individual touchpoints from start to finish on an onsite journey.Cate Milton: So that's only what we're talking about when visitors actually come online on site. We also have, like you were saying earlier, digital journeys that our digital engagement team look at. We have membership, we have schools, we have people with accessibility requirements. They all have a different journey.Cate Milton: There's all sorts of different things to layer on top of that you can kind of factor in. But, it was, it was very in depth and just absolutely fascinating, and a really good opportunity to kin of get everyone on board the same thing as well, and to get departments that kind of sit alongside each other, but maybe don't overlap so often. Or, we're the same as many other organisations, multi-site organisations that sometimes silos or kind of barrier, and doing things like this really starts to show everyone how they're part of the entire, and that cross-department working is really, really useful.Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's re-engaging the internal team with the visitor as well, isn't it, because you've put them in their in their shoes-Cate Milton: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: ... and you've mentioned empathy. What was it you called it?Cate Milton: Yeah. So, we did some empathy mapping, where essentially we kind of, before we sent people out on that service safari we gave them these personas and we gave them kind of questionnaires about, "What do you think this person or this group of people is looking for? What do you think their main considerations are? What do you think their main worries are? What do they need on site? What they trying to get out of it?" I mean, KPMG made us, created us some personas that combined things like our cultural segments, as well and making sure we've got that overlap between motivations and needs. Personas are a key part of customer journey mapping, and yeah, kin of creating... Say it's the general kind of average visitor, which is incredibly difficult for a lot of sites, because we've got-Kelly Molson: They don't exist, do they?Cate Milton: Exactly. Do you know what I mean? We've got people from all over the world or different backgrounds, so that is a difficult thing. But, I think one of the other things to kind of bear in mind with customer journey mapping is you don't want to get analysis paralysis. I suppose you don't want to kind of get into that mindset where you are kind of analyzing so much that you don't just get something done. It is so important to get started because the thing with customer journey maps is they're not static documents. That's not it. You don't create one and then, "Oh, we're done now. This is what it looks like."Cate Milton: You take it, you learn from it, you update it, you review it, you take kind of opportunities from it. You look at how else you can track and wonder about trends, so if you can prove something you kind of keep an eye on feedback, see it and re-improve that. So, it keeps moving. That's its value, is that it's a live document that you keep updating to see how the journey moves and where the weak points get to, and eventually you end up with just five across the board and you're like, now you're done. Now you-Kelly Molson: I'm sure that is not the case.Cate Milton: No, I don't think so.Kelly Molson: You went through this process six months. Actually, yeah, that was interesting, because I thought that you were going to say it was longer. I was expecting you to say it was a year's process.Cate Milton: Yeah.Kelly Molson: So, six months. What were the outcomes from that, and what have you had to improve because of it?Cate Milton: So, I think one of the biggest outcomes... Because I should also say that we, the delivery of this, got pushed forward slightly because the end of the world happened. So, we kind of got to spring 2020, getting to the point where we were just about to understand everything there is to know, and then obviously it just disappeared.Kelly Molson: Right? The world went, "Ah-ah-ah-ah."Cate Milton: Yeah, exactly.Kelly Molson: "Ready or not."Cate Milton: Like, "Okay then, so there's no customers to improve the experience of right now." So, that obviously put a pause on things for a little while, but one of the biggest things I think it gave a focus to, which is one of the major outcomes, was like you said, kind of helping people refocus on the visitor, on the customer. What it meant was we were able to demonstrate that operations really have ownership of that entire journey, and we have kind of... I mean, they're a bit more than subject matter experts, but like our interpretation teams, our curatorial teams, they support Ops and Ops support them to deliver.Cate Milton: But, it was just really important that we started moving towards an organisation where operations control and own that end-to-end journey, so that someone does and so that there's consistency in delivery, so that we aren't switching back and forth between different departments, which, internally we can work like that. That's fine. We understand about how it's this person interpretation and it's this person, but we don't want our visitors to feel like there's effort between touchpoints. They see it as sterile palaces, that's what we need to present it as. So, it made sense for operations to really kind of, I suppose, step up and take ownership of that, and our structure now reflects that as well.Cate Milton: So, I think in terms of kind of outcomes, it was a lot of kin of realisation of how best to run a customer experience. And also, just the fact that, like I said, we had so many different overlaps of things, and it kind of starts drawing out as well the themes throughout the entire organisation, but also there's places where the palaces, are different and there's a balance to be struck there about, they have to be different. They tell different stories, they have different personalities, but we want it to be an HRP standard, so how does that apply to each of the different sites?Cate Milton: So, after we did Tara Kensington, we've also got a ticketing journey map as well. I've just done the Hampton Court one. So, for the first time HRP has done a customer journey map by themselves, so I went out and did the Hampton Courts customer journey map, and we'd just come to the conclusion of that and fed back to the workshop group. So, kind of having that learning about how to approach these things, how to do it, how to be sustainable on our own so that we don't have to keep going back and say, "We've got another one. Can you help us do another one?" Yeah, and hopefully we'll be able to do Hillsborough and then go back and start, as I said before, layering the schools and community visits; absolutely layering accessibility.Cate Milton: A colleague of mine made the really good point that that should be a priority for us, and 100% agree. Some of our sites are incredibly challenging for people with different access requirements because they weren't built that way.Cate Milton: Tower London in particular was built to keep people out, rather than welcoming two million or so visitors. So, there's challenges around that, and I think any other historic site would sympathise with that. So, I think it just kind of focused us, really. It focused us on what we can do for customer experience, and that it's an ongoing thing. It's not a, "we'll do it, we'll fix it, we'll move on." But also just the fact that... I think I've said briefly before that it's not about fixing individual touchpoints, and the best example, I guess... I keep wheeling out this one example to everyone to demonstrate it. It's where we've kind of, as everybody has moved to a more online ticketing model... Because that's the fluid expectations of customers, that's what people expect. They want to be able to self-serve and be able to sort themselves out. Great. We're brilliant, we're on that, people can do that.Cate Milton: But the problem is that if we are moving to that model and the majority of our visitors are booking online, when they turn up onsite, if they come to the West Gate at Hampton Court, the West Gate at Tower of London, they haven't had a chat with our great admissions team, so they haven't had a chance to orientate themselves. They haven't had a chance to be given a map and be told what's going on that day. They've kind of been able to skip that and go straight to a gate. So it's kind of, okay, so we've made that bit better and more seamless, but now we've moved a problem further down the line. So, it's understanding the changes to one touch point and how that impacts the rest of the journey. You can't just fix one thing in isolation and think, "Excellent, that will be up and green now," without considering its position in the entire, in the rest of the journey I think.Kelly Molson: That is such an excellent point, isn't it? You can't fix one touch point without it impacting another.Cate Milton: Absolutely.Kelly Molson: And how do you monitor the impacts when you do?Cate Milton: Yeah.Kelly Molson: Oh, goodness. I was going to ask you what was your biggest learning from the process, but it sounds like one of the biggest learnings was being able to do it yourself.Cate Milton: Yes. I don't have to do it now. No, it absolutely was. I was so valuable to watch the the guys from KPMG, because in terms of consultancy support they are some of the best, KPMG, some of the best in that kind of area of customer experience. So, it was amazing to kind of go through that. Also kind of understand some of the psychology behind it, and what we're trying to achieve and why, and even kind of watching them watching our visitors up on Tower Hill and understanding how they're moving, and how we might be able to improve that, and where their hesitations are, and what might be going on. That kind of understanding, that psychological factor, was so useful... so, so useful for me taking it on boards and taking it further for the organisation.Kelly Molson: Do you think as a result of this, as well, that the internal teams work better... Even though this was a process to help improve the customer's experience... do you think it's actually helped the internal teams?Cate Milton: Oh, completely, 100%, because it's now something we've got to refer to and they can see where they fit in. And that's not to say that people didn't realise that before, and it's absolutely not to say that everyone was just working in their own little kingdom before, but I think it gives a central focus point.Cate Milton: And so, the end of the world got in the way the little bit, so we are looking now to kind of... Now we've got the Hampton court one and we're putting in place the process for reviewing that, for reviewing our kind of customer experience backlog documents that we now have for each palace, to understand we need to get on with this area, this element. So for example, Hampton Court, we need some better signage in the car park, so we can get on with that first. That's a priority. We know that's a, that's a pain point.Cate Milton: So, we've kind of got these lists and we're putting in place this process for reviewing those, keeping us, holding ourselves to account, making sure we're getting on with things as and when we can; the same with, basically I guess, every other kind of museum, gallery, heritage attraction resource and funding is an issue for us at the moment. So it's just understanding kind of where those priorities are. But yeah, understanding that process and how we review it, and bringing all of those departments in and kind of working together on how we fix things or improve things, I think, is definitely going to be getting better and better as we go on. We're kind of about to relaunch it, in a way, now that we've got the Hampton Court one as well.Kelly Molson: Yeah.Cate Milton: Because it's taken a while for everyone to come back to work, to find their feet again. I don't know about anyone else, but it took me a long time to be able to focus for any more than five minutes at time, so now that we're back there and it's starting to look a bit more normal. We can really start kind of launching that, making sure the entire organisation understands what we've got, why we've got them, and how we intend to use them. So, that will be kind of a job for this summer and into the autumn.Kelly Molson: I mean, what a great experience, what a great process to go through, and it's had so many incredible outcomes.Cate Milton: Yes.Kelly Molson: What would be your top tips for any organisation that's about to embark on something similar?Cate Milton: I think that the most important thing is involve your colleagues, and involve them early. A lot of people... Obviously, there's always going to be demands on kind of time and energy, but making sure that people understand early how important they are to, and how important their work in their departments are to understanding everything is vital, and organisations can only be stronger for it. I'd also say in terms of our kind of visitor attraction organisations, front of house teams, making sure that their voice is absolutely heard, because it's one thing for somebody who's in the back office, tapping away, to start coming and saying, "We think this, and we're going to fix it with this," if you haven't actually asked the guys who are out on the grounds, answering the question of where the toilets are for the 50th time in hour.Cate Milton: So, I think that was the biggest thing for me, was making sure to whatever extent that you do customer daily mapping... because you can do a pretty informal version. You can take it to the extent that we did, but it's make sure that your front of house teams are heard and are a big part of it, I think.Kelly Molson: Good tip. Weirdly, that's where we go and start, as well, from digital perspective-Cate Milton: Oh, really?Kelly Molson: ... because people often think that you just talk to the marketing department because that's who you are engaged with, that's who's brought you on. But for us to understand where digital can support the organisation, we need to understand what challenges front of house are having, and then bring the two together?Cate Milton: Completely that.Kelly Molson: Completely. So glad. I knew we'd be aligned, Cate. I knew you would be. Right. We need to talk about Superbloom.Cate Milton: Yeah.Kelly Molson: I mean, spectacular. You're in the midst of it right now. For anyone who's watching this, or anyone who's listening to this and not watching the video... Why aren't you watching the video, because we are fabulous. Cate's in a high-vis jacket right now because she's actually on site-Cate Milton: Yep.Kelly Molson: ... in the midst of Superbloom.Cate Milton: Absolutely, yes. I'm out there as an event coordinator today. So, yeah, running around looking after our volunteers and our visitors, making sure that everything's running smoothly and, yeah, everyone's happy, which is a lot easier in beautiful sunshine like this.Kelly Molson: It is a glorious, glorious day, and it is an absolutely spectacular show piece, what you have there, so congrats on pulling it off.Cate Milton: Thank you so much. I mean, I can't take really any credit for it. Honestly, it's our interpretation teams have been working on this for about three years. It's been a really long buildup to the project. The work started onsite in about October, and then there's been a lot of, kind of, since I think late March, early April, a lot of kind of staring at soil, kind of like, "Are we okay? Are they coming?"Kelly Molson: "Please work."Cate Milton: And the thing is... I mean, honestly, I can't even explain what an amazing job they've done, and there's something like 20 million seeds planted in that moat, so that the scale of it cannot be underestimated.Kelly Molson: Gosh.Cate Milton: But yeah, we got there, we opened officially on the 1st of June just in time for the Jubilee weekend, and it was something that we learned from our commemorations of World War I's, for both the poppies and the flames: that the public really liked having the Towers as kind of a place, essential place to come and take part in national events. So, that's kind of where the thought came from about celebrating the Queen's Jubilee, with that kind of changing the moat again. We've upgraded from ceramic poppies to the real thing. There's a wonderful scattering of California poppies down there at the moment, so it's looking absolutely stunning. We've got everything from different smells going on, there's music down there, which honestly is so Zen. It's my favourite place to be. I'll just go walk through like, "I'm so calm right now. There is no City of London out there, there's no traffic. I'm just in the bed of flowers and this amazing music."Cate Milton: But yeah, it's been going really well, and yeah, it's one of those times where you just realise how strong your teams are. We've got kind of event coordinators who all have other jobs, that volunteered to come out and help on their days off or alongside their regular jobs. We've got volunteer coordinators who are mostly our front of house teams, who, as anyone will know, in a summer it's so busy onsite anyway, and then for them to offer to come and help in Superbloom on days off is incredible. So, it does... Yeah, without being too kind of gooey about it, it makes you really proud to be part of an organisation that kind of has the vision to do this and then moves forward and actually does it. And we also have a slide, which is-Kelly Molson: Oh, well, I mean, if you weren't sold before Cate mentioned the slide, I mean, tick. I'm there.Cate Milton: Come and slide into the moat. Do you know what, it's the most joyous thing. The kids love it, obviously, but my absolute favourite thing has been watching adults. We have grandmothers going off and going down, and it just... I want to be like them. I want to still have that kind of, I think, playfulness, but I'm kind of closer, a little bit closer, to the end of my run on this earth, but-Kelly Molson: Oh, phenomenal, yeah.Cate Milton: Absolutely. Yeah. It's a great event, and it's just something completely different in the city, and it represents the biggest change we've made to the moat... or, not HRP, but has been made to the moat since the Duke of Wellington drained it in eight, I think 1843.Kelly Molson: Okay.Cate Milton: So, since then it's been mostly turf. It's been kind of used for other practicalities, like allotments in World War II and so on, but yeah, it hasn't been changed to this extent since then, so it's a big mark in the history of the Tower, as well; as well as kind of acknowledging the Queen's achievement, and just helping the biodiversity a little bit of city of London, as well.Kelly Molson: Yeah.Cate Milton: One of the best bits is you are walking through the flowers, if you stop and look, they're moving. There's so many pollinators and wildlife in there. It's just, yeah. It's amazing. It's a very kind of wholesome, grounding, life isn't so bad kind of place to be.Kelly Molson: Yeah. I mean, Cate, you've absolutely sold it. Absolutely.Cate Milton: Oh good, everybody come.Kelly Molson: Everyone go visit. I mean, how could you not after that? Cate, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you. We always ask our guests to recommend a book, a book that you love, that you'd recommend to our listeners. What have you got for us?Cate Milton: So, this was so hard, honestly. I was sat there looking at my bookshelves because I've got everything from basically every book that's ever been written on Henry V, because I'm a geek on that side of things. I think one of the ones that kind of really woke me up to understanding the psychological side of customer experience a little bit more was Thinking Fast and Slow, which most people in this environment, I'm sure, have read or heard of. But, it's a great way of understanding what's going on in people's minds when they're just going around their everyday life. So yeah, that's been so helpful in terms of working out how to make things more seamless and making sure that people can do things automatically, and it's intuitive and obvious, which means the bigger part of them is free to enjoy and be happy and be excited about where they are.Cate Milton: So, I think that's definitely a big one for me. But, from a kind of personal side of view, if I'm not looking at heritage, then whales and dolphins are my absolute, absolute passion, and there's a book, called Leviathan, by Philip Hoare, who's... He's also a whale fanatic, and it's just his relationship with understanding the oceans, understanding kind of the history of whales, of whaling, the changing relationship between humanity and whales. It's my absolute favourite book. So yeah, if you want something a bit out there, a bit random, then Leviathan is an amazingly well-written book.Kelly Molson: That sounds beautiful. Well, I mean, neither of those books have been recommended on the podcast before. This is really interesting.Cate Milton: It's like, Thinking Fast and Slow, I was just like, I feel like everyone would've said that one because it's, yeah. The chapters are really short. It's kind of a concentrating read, but absolutely, it really sets out how humans think and why we are as we are, so I think it's really, really valuable in terms of thinking about customer experience.Kelly Molson: Yes, great. I'm absolutely amazed that nobody has recommended it before, but, right. Okay. So we... Well, Cate has blown my marketing budget, like most people do. So, we'll give you two books to win this month.Cate Milton: Thank you, thank you. Sorry about that.Kelly Molson: You know what to do, listeners: head over to our Twitter account, find this episode announcement, and retweet it with the words, "I want Cate's book..." Uh, books because there's two.Cate Milton: Yeah, sorry. Sorry.Kelly Molson: And you'll be in with a chance of winning them. So, go over and do that. Cate, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you.Cate Milton: Thank you so much. I honestly, I'm such a geek on this stuff, so it's so nice to have an excuse to talk about it.Kelly Molson: I've loved it. Well, feel free to come back on any time and talk more about it, because it's been a delight.Cate Milton: Thank you so much.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.  

Libri: Jean Claude Izzo, La trilogia di Fabio Montale (trad. Barbara Ferri e/o edizioni) Philip Hoare, “Il mare dentro” (trad. Massimiliano Bonatto, The Passenger: Oceano) Johnny Marr, Set the Boy Free, l'autobiografia (trad. Anna Mioni, BigSur) Musica: Mediterranean Café Society Pachelbel: Canone Albinoni, Adagio in Sol minore Čajkovskij, Quartetto d'archi n° 1 Editors, Ocean of Night Radiohead, All I Need, Nude Johnny Marr, Easy Money Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Antilope Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, Coma Girl

Pages 350 - 358 │ Sirens, part IV│ Read by Philip HoarePhilip Hoare is the author of nine works of non-fiction. His Leviathan or, The Whale won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. His latest book is Albert & the Whale. He is professor of creative writing at the University of Southampton and is co-curator, with Angela Cockayne, of the digital projectshttps://www.mobydickbigread.com/ and https://www.ancientmarinerbigread.com/Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/philipwhaleBuy Albert & the Whale here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780008323325/albert-the-whale*Looking for our author interview podcast? Listen here: https://podfollow.com/shakespeare-and-companySUBSCRIBE NOW FOR EARLY EPISODES AND BONUS FEATURESAll episodes of our Ulysses podcast are free and available to everyone. However, if you want to be the first to hear the recordings, by subscribing, you can now get early access to recordings of complete sections.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/channel/shakespeare-and-company/id6442697026Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoIn addition a subscription gets you access to regular bonus episodes of our author interview podcast. All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop's non-profit.*Discover more about Shakespeare and Company here: https://shakespeareandcompany.comBuy the Penguin Classics official partner edition of Ulysses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780241552636/ulyssesFind out more about Hay Festival here: https://www.hayfestival.com/homeAdam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Find out more about him here: https://www.adambiles.netBuy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeDr. Lex Paulson is Executive Director of the School of Collective Intelligence at Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique in Morocco.Original music & sound design by Alex Freiman.Hear more from Alex Freiman here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Follow Alex Freiman on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/alex.guitarfreiman/Featuring Flora Hibberd on vocals.Hear more of Flora Hibberd here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5EFG7rqfVfdyaXiRZbRkpSVisit Flora Hibberd's website: This is my website:florahibberd.com and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/florahibberd/ Music production by Adrien Chicot.Hear more from Adrien Chicot here: https://bbact.lnk.to/utco90/Follow Adrien Chicot on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/adrienchicot/Photo of Philip Hoare by Jeroen Hoekendijk See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Director and artist Derek Jarman is remembered for his unique ability to capture the natural world on the page, as well as the garden he created at Prospect Cottage in Dungeness. A new book, ‘Pharmacopoeia', brings together the best of Jarman's writing on nature. This week, we discuss Jarman and his legacy with author and curator Philip Hoare, and hear about a garden inspired by Jarman on the banks of Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

The first under-water film, the making of Moby Dick in Fishguard, Wales, the poetry of Marianne Moore and the secret world of whale scavengers are conjured by Rana Mitter's guests: In a new book, Strandings, Peter Riley, Associate Professor in Poetry and Poetics at the University of Durham, loses himself in the secretive world of whale-scavengers who descend on coastlines to claim trophies from washed-up carcasses. Author and artist Philip Hoare has written extensively about whales, encountering them often in his daily swims in the sea. His most recent book, Albert and the Whale, explores the life of Albrecht Dürer. You can hear him talking more about this link in another Free Thinking episode called Dürer, Rhinos and Whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001212c Rachel Murray is a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Sheffield whose current project examines the presence of marine life, particularly invertebrates, in contemporary and modern literature and both she and Philip Hoare look at the poetry of Marianne Moore. You can hear her presenting a Radio 4 feature Lady Chatterley's Bed Bugs https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qwtx Edward Sugden, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at King's College, is undertaking a biography of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, which turns the novel itself into a character and tracks its turbulent history from near-obscurity to becoming one of the most enduring novels of all time. Producer: Tim Bano You can find a playlist exploring prose and poetry of all kinds on the Free Thinking website and a series of programmes exploring Modernist ideas and writing and there's also an episode devoted to Jaws: Sharks and Whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060zryf

The first underwater film, the making of Moby Dick in Fishguard, Wales, the poetry of Marianne Moore and the secret world of whale scavengers are conjured by Rana Mitter's guests: In a new book, Strandings, Peter Riley, Associate Professor in Poetry and Poetics at the University of Durham, loses himself in the secretive world of whale-scavengers who descend on coastlines to claim trophies from washed-up carcasses. Author and artist Philip Hoare has written extensively about whales, encountering them often in his daily swims in the sea. His most recent book, Albert and the Whale, explores the life of Albrecht Dürer. You can hear him talking more about this link in another Free Thinking episode called Dürer, Rhinos and Whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001212c Rachel Murray is a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Sheffield whose current project examines the presence of marine life, particularly invertebrates, in contemporary and modern literature and both she and Philip Hoare look at the poetry of Marianne Moore. You can hear her presenting a Radio 4 feature Lady Chatterley's Bed Bugs https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qwtx Edward Sugden, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at King's College, is undertaking a biography of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, which turns the novel itself into a character and tracks its turbulent history from near-obscurity to becoming one of the most enduring novels of all time. Producer: Tim Bano You can find a playlist exploring prose and poetry of all kinds on the Free Thinking website and a series of programmes exploring Modernist ideas and writing and there's also an episode devoted to Jaws: Sharks and Whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060zryf Image: A sperm whale

“Hoare writes with the license of the nonexpert; you can feel the delight he takes in being unbound by anything but his enthusiasms.”John Williams was describing Philip Hoare when he wrote that line, but he could easily have been describing me. As a nonexpert, I am free to speculate and arrive at my own conclusions. So are you. And so is your customer. You, me, and your customer claim we use deductive reasoning, but it simply isn't true. Deductive reasoning – the basis of scientific method – would require us to work diligently to disprove what we believe. Do you know anyone who actually does that? Rather than use deductive reasoning, we use inductive reasoning to search out information confirming that our values, beliefs, instincts, and preferences have been right all along. When confronted with contradictory information, our confirmation bias kicks in to assure us the contradictory information is not correct, so we dismiss it with the flick of a mental finger. Let me help you with that flicking away of contradictory information. I am an ad writer. Magical thinking, inductive reasoning, and confirmation bias sparkle at my fingertips. My job is to speak to that which is already within you. You have more than enough information. Let me agree with what you already believe. Google and Facebook will use their algorithms to help us build a community where we can surround ourselves with like-minded people who share our opinions and beliefs. Everyone who doesn't agree with us is uninformed, misinformed, fooled by faulty data, foolish rumor, or evil geniuses. Magical thinking, inductive reasoning, and confirmation bias sparkle at the fingertips of every evil genius. But I am not an evil genius. I am the genius that agrees with you. Magical thinking is difficult to explain, but Kurt Andersen does a pretty good job: “Americans have always been magical thinkers and passionate believers in the untrue. Our nation was started by Puritans in New England who wanted to create a Christian utopia as they waited for the imminent second coming of Christ and the End of Days. To the south, a bunch of people were convinced, absolutely convinced, that this place they had never been was full of gold waiting to be plucked from the dirt in Virginia. They stayed there looking and hoping for gold for 20 years before they finally faced the facts and decided they weren't going to get rich overnight.” “This was the beginning of America. Next we had centuries of ‘buyer beware' charlatanism and medical quackery to an extreme degree, along with increasingly exotic, extravagant, implausible cults and religions.” “All those things came together and were supercharged in the 1960s, when you were entitled to your own truth and your own reality. A generation later the internet came along, giving each of those realities, no matter how false or magical or nutty they are, their own kind of media infrastructure.” A wonderful story is dazzling and attractive, regardless of whether or not it is true. This is the basis of all successful advertising.“Hoare writes with the license of the nonexpert; you can feel the delight he takes in being unbound by anything but his enthusiasms.” John Williams wrote those words in https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/books/review-albert-whale-albrecht-durer-philip-hoare.html (his recommendation) of Philip Hoare's new book, “Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World.” John Williams book review column is titled, appropriately, “Books of the Times.” Roy H. Williams

In this Christmas special of Travels Through Time our three wise presenters Peter, Violet and Artemis get together to remember some of their favourite books and episodes from the last year on the podcast.  Thank you so much to all of our listeners for joining us over the course of the year and happy Christmas! As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com. Click here to order the books discussed in this episode from John Sandoe's who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast. Show Notes Peter's choices: The Ruin of all Witches by Malcolm Gaskill, Surviving Katyn by Jane Rogoyska Violet's choices: Albert & the Whale by Philip Hoare, Egyptian Mythology by Garry J. Shaw Artemis's choices: The City of Tears by Kate Mosse, Blood Legacy by Alex Renton People/Social Presenters: Peter Moore, Violet Moller, Artemis Irvine Production: Maria Nolan Podcast partner: Unseen Histories Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_ Or on Facebook  

This week Philip Hoare discusses Albert & the Whale his dive into the mind of Albrecht Durer, one of the most well-known yet mysterious of artists. Mysterious because he lived at that fluid time, in the fifteenth century, where history and legend often blend into one. Mysterious because his works feel so replete with meaning and yet prove so hard to interpret. And mysterious because his skills were so advanced, his genius so profound, that his techniques are hard to replicate even more than five centuries later.'This is a wonderful book. A lyrical journey into the natural and unnatural world' Patti SmithBuy Albert & the Whale here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780008323295/albert-and-the-whaleBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*Albrecht Durer changed the way we saw nature through art. From his prints in 1498 of the plague ridden Apocalypse - the first works mass produced by any artist - to his hyper-real images of animals and plants, his art was a revelation: it showed us who we are but it also foresaw our future. It is a vision that remains startlingly powerful and seductive, even now.In Albert & the Whale, Philip Hoare sets out to discover why Durer's art endures. He encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Durer's fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare, and he traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan that the artist pursued. And as the author swims from Europe to America and beyond, these prophetic artists and downed angels provoke awkward questions. What is natural or unnatural? Is art a fatal contract? Or does it in fact have the power to save us?With its wild and watery adventures, its witty accounts of amazing cultural lives and its delight in the fragile beauty of the natural world, Albert & the Whale offers glorious, inspiring insights into a great artist, and his unerring, sometimes disturbing gaze.*Philip Hoare is the author of six works of non-fiction: Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1990) and Noel Coward: A Biography (1995), Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the First World War (1997), Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital (2000), and England's Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005). Leviathan or, The Whale (2008), won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. Most recently, The Sea Inside (2013) was published to great critical acclaim.An experienced broadcaster, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three films for BBC's Whale Night. He is Visiting Fellow at Southampton University, and Leverhulme Artist-in-residence at The Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honourary doctorate in 2011.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman's Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week Philip Hoare discusses Albert & the Whale his dive into the mind of Albrecht Durer, one of the most well-known yet mysterious of artists. Mysterious because he lived at that fluid time, in the fifteenth century, where history and legend often blend into one. Mysterious because his works feel so replete with meaning and yet prove so hard to interpret. And mysterious because his skills were so advanced, his genius so profound, that his techniques are hard to replicate even more than five centuries later. 'This is a wonderful book. A lyrical journey into the natural and unnatural world' Patti Smith Buy Albert & the Whale here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780008323295/albert-and-the-whale Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore * Albrecht Durer changed the way we saw nature through art. From his prints in 1498 of the plague ridden Apocalypse - the first works mass produced by any artist - to his hyper-real images of animals and plants, his art was a revelation: it showed us who we are but it also foresaw our future. It is a vision that remains startlingly powerful and seductive, even now. In Albert & the Whale, Philip Hoare sets out to discover why Durer's art endures. He encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Durer's fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare, and he traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan that the artist pursued. And as the author swims from Europe to America and beyond, these prophetic artists and downed angels provoke awkward questions. What is natural or unnatural? Is art a fatal contract? Or does it in fact have the power to save us? With its wild and watery adventures, its witty accounts of amazing cultural lives and its delight in the fragile beauty of the natural world, Albert & the Whale offers glorious, inspiring insights into a great artist, and his unerring, sometimes disturbing gaze. * Philip Hoare is the author of six works of non-fiction: Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1990) and Noel Coward: A Biography (1995), Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the First World War (1997), Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital (2000), and England's Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005). Leviathan or, The Whale (2008), won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. Most recently, The Sea Inside (2013) was published to great critical acclaim. An experienced broadcaster, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three films for BBC's Whale Night. He is Visiting Fellow at Southampton University, and Leverhulme Artist-in-residence at The Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honourary doctorate in 2011. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time Listen to Alex Freiman's Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Dürer's whale-chasing and images of rhinos, dogs, saints and himself come into focus, as Rana Mitter talks to Philip Hoare, author of Albert and the Whale, curator Robert Wenley and historian Helen Cowie as exhibitions open at the National Gallery and the Barber Institute in Birmingham. And Philip Hoare explains the links between the Renaissance artist and the visions of Derek Jarman which are on show in Southampton in an exhibition he has curated. Philip Hoare's books include Leviathan, or The Whale, RisingTideFallingStar, Noel Coward a biography, and his latest Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World. He has curated Derek Jarman's Modern Nature at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton. It runs until Feb 26 2022 and presents Jarman alongside works by John Minton, John Piper, Graham Sutherland, and Keith Vaughan; from the surrealists, Eileen Agar and John Banting, through to Albrecht Dürer. Robert Wenley is Head of Collections, Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham where Miss Clara and the Celebrity Beast in Art 1500 - 1860 runs until 27 Feb 2022 Helen Cowie is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of York . Her books include Exhibited Animals in Nineteenth Century Britain and Llama and catalogue descriptions for the Barber exhibition. Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist runs at the National Gallery until 27 Feb 2022. Producer: Robyn Read You can find a playlist of discussions exploring Art, Architecture, Photography and Museums on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026wnjl If you want more conversations about animals we have programmes about Dogs, Rabbits and Watership Down, Cows and farming, and one asking Should We Keep Pets?

John Waters once said nothing is more impotent than an unread library. In this episode, the cult film director responsible for such enduring cult classics as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Cry Baby and Hairspray talks about Serious Pleasures, Philip Hoare's extraordinary biography of Stephen Tennant, one of the so-called Bright Young Things who fascinated and scandalized 1920s Britain, alongside other headline-grabbing figures of the day such as Cecil Beaton and the Mitford sisters.  "I like to be taken into a world that's very foreign to me, and learn something," he says. "I  like somebody who's smart, and who can talk about their feelings. That's why I like biographies, just to see mistakes that people made, and what they did with success and failure." What does he love about the life of Tennant? "I love that he went to bed for 17 years because life made him too giddy." In this episode we also talk to Philip Hoare, the author of Serious Pleasures, about the challenges of writing a biography when your subject has just died.

Alberto y la ballena es una historia sobre el arte de Alberto Durero y la onda expansiva que provoca en la cultura, que llega hasta hoy. Hoare habla de Durero, pero también de David Bowie, de Thomas Mann, de Shakespeare, o de Herman Melville

I talk with philosopher, historian, nature writer, and memoirist Philip Hoare about animals (especially whales), and nature (especially water).

In this episode of The World in Time, Lewis H. Lapham and Philip Hoare discuss Albrecht Dürer's brilliance, what his art meant to people throughout history, and the centuries-long ubiquity of his woodcut of a rhinoceros—an animal the artist had never seen. Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Philip Hoare, author of “Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World.” Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

Albrecht Dürer changed the way we saw nature through art. From his prints in 1498 of the plague ridden Apocalypse – the first works mass produced by any artist – to his hyper-real images of animals and plants, his art was a revelation: it showed us who we are but it also foresaw our future. It is a vision that remains startlingly powerful and seductive, even now. In Albert the Whale, Philip Hoare sets out to discover why Dürer's art endures. He encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Dürer's fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare, and he traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan that the artist pursued. And as the author swims from Europe to America and beyond, these prophetic artists and downed angels provoke awkward questions. What is natural or unnatural? Is art a fatal contract? Or does it in fact have the power to save us? With its wild and watery adventures, its witty accounts of amazing cultural lives and its delight in the fragile beauty of the natural world, Albert the Whale offers glorious, inspiring insights into a great artist, and his unerring, sometimes disturbing gaze --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pbliving/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pbliving/support

In 1520 the artist Albrecht Dürer was on the run from the Plague and on the look-out for distraction when he heard that a huge whale had been beached on the coast of Zeeland. So he set off to see the astonishing creature for himself. In this beautifully-evoked episode the award-winning writing Philip Hoare takes us back to those consequential days in 1520. We catch sight of Dürer, the great master of the Northern Renaissance, as he searches for the whale. This, he realises, is his chance to make his greatest ever print. Philip Hoare is the author of nine works of non-fiction, including biographies of Stephen Tennant and Noël Coward, and the studies, Wilde's Last Stand and England's Lost Eden.  Spike Island was chosen by W.G. Sebald as his book of the year for 2001.  In 2009, Leviathan or, The Whale won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. It was followed in 2013 by The Sea Inside, and in 2017 by RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR.  His new book, Albert & the Whale led the New York Times to call the author a 'forceful weather system' of his own. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and co-curator, with Angela Cockayne, of the digital projects http://www.mobydickbigread.com/ and https://www.ancientmarinerbigread.com/ As ever, much, much more about this episode is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com. Show notes Scene One: Nuremberg, home of Albrecht Dürer, at the height of its power as an imperial city, of art and technology. Scene Two: The Low Countries. Driven out of Nuremberg by the plague and a city in lockdown, Dürer escapes to the seaside. Scene Three: Halfway through his year away, Dürer hears a whale has been stranded in Zeeland.  This is his chance to make his greatest print, a follow up to his hit woodcut of a rhinoceros.  What follows next is near disaster, a mortal act.  It changes his life. Memento: Memento: A lock of Dürer's hair (which Hoare would use to regenerate him and then get him to paint his portrait) People/Social Presenter: Violet Moller Guest: Philip Hoare Production: Maria Nolan Podcast partner: Colorgraph Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_ Or on Facebook See where 1520 fits on our Timeline 

Reviewer for Unity Books Wellington John Duke reviews Albert and the Whale by Philip Hoare, published by Fourth Estate.

Alok Jha talks to the award-winning writer Philip Hoare about his life-long love for and obsession with whales and their history in Antarctica. Philip's numerous books include Leviathan or, The Whale, which won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize, and has been published all over the world. It was followed by The Sea Inside (2013) and RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR (2017).His latest book, Albert & the Whale, is published by 4th Estate in the UK. Philip wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three short films for BBC's Whale Night. He is co-curator of the Moby-Dick and Ancient Mariner ‘Big Reads', and is professor of creative writing at the University of Southampton.Special thanks to The Dominica Sperm Whale Project for providing recordings of sperm whales for this episode. http://www.thespermwhaleproject.org See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Philip Hoare returns to Little Atoms and talks to Neil about his fascination with Albrecht Dürer, and Dürer's fascination with painting a whale in his new book Albert & The Whale. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the second season of this podcast from the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, we’ll be delving further into the extraordinary human stories of the wildest, windiest place on our planet. We’ll hear from explorers, scientists and writers who’ve built their lives around this incredible continent. Our guests include explorers Felicity Aston and Dwayne Fields, writer Philip Hoare and space scientist Suzie Imber. Together, we’ll uncover untold histories, and gain insight into the cutting-edge research happening here, on the front-line in the fight against climate change. All from the people who’ve been there and make it happen. We hope that, like us, you’ll come to understand just how much Antarctica matters to us all. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The deep sea is the last, vast wilderness on Earth. In The Brilliant Abyss the marine biologist Helen Scales dives below the surface to tell the story of our relationship with the ocean floor. With an average depth of 12,000 feet it remains a frontier for new discoveries and extraordinary creatures. But Helen Scales warns Andrew Marr of the unfolding environmental disasters as people seek to exploit this new world, far beyond the public gaze. The writer Philip Hoare explores nature through the work of the artist Albrecht Dürer. From his 15th century prints of the plague-ridden Apocalypse to his leviathans in the deep, Dürer’s works were a revelation. In Albert & the Whale Hoare writes about the enduring quality of his art and its powerful message about the fragile beauty of the natural world. The journalist Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of the international bestseller, The Sixth Extinction, which was a clear-eyed account of humanity’s impact on the Earth. In Under A White Sky she asks whether through scientific innovation we can reverse some of the damage done. She meets those re-engineering ‘super coral’ which can withstand hotter waters and those tasked with saving the rarest fish species in the world. Producer: Katy Hickman

An excerpt from "Leviathon or, The Whale", by Philip Hoare, in which we learn about the precious, pungent substance ambergris; its source-place in the body of the sperm whale and its unlikely use in the coronations of British monarchs in Westminster Abbey.

It's Inclusion Week, and #InsideAtkins Podcast speaks with Philip Hoare on how Atkins is doing, why ED&I matters, and the future of ED&I across the global organization.

Discover more: https://www.ancientmarinerbigread.com/reading/22 Reader Philip Hoare Author Recorded on Southampton Water --- The body of my brother's son Stood by me, knee to knee: The body and I pulled at one rope, But he said nought to me. 'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!' Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! 'Twas not those souls that fled in pain, Which to their corses came again, But a troop of spirits blest: For when it dawned—they dropped their arms, And clustered round the mast; Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed. Around, around, flew each sweet sound, Then darted to the Sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, Now mixed, now one by one. --- You can find the Ancient Mariner Big Read here: https://www.ancientmarinerbigread.com/ --- Copyright: The Arts Institute, University of Plymouth. The Ancient Mariner Big Read is not for profit and cannot be sold, either as a whole or in part, without permission from The Arts Institute, University of Plymouth, UK.

W.G. Sebald's book The Rings of Saturn, first published in Germany in 1995, is the subject of this episode. Joining John and Andy to walk around this enigmatic masterpiece are the writer and swimmer Philip Hoare and the novelist Jessie Greengrass. Other books under discussion are The Years by Annie Ernaux and Fiona Benson's award-winning poetry collection Vertigo & Ghost.

In her latest book ‘Surfacing’ (Sort of Books), poet and essayist Kathleen Jamie explores what emerges: from the earth, from memory and from the mind. Her travels take her from Arctic Alaska to the sand dunes and machair of Scotland in a quest to discover what archaeology might tell us about the past, the present and the future. Her writing throughout is marked, as always, by an acute attention to the natural world. She was in conversation about her work with Philip Hoare, author of ‘Leviathan’ and ‘Risingtidefallingstar’. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is the Writers’ Rebellion: Are You Here For This? The Extinction Rebellion Podcast is back to normal length; with an episode perfect to kick back to during the post rebellion regenerative period. It features a feast of stories and poems from the Writers' Marathon in Trafalgar Square, London (on the 11th of October, 2019). From Salena Goddens’ call to action, to Philip Hoare’s face-to-face encounter with a whale, Owen Sheers' poem to his daughter in the womb, to Natasha Walter and Tom Bollough’s recollections of being arrested for Extinction Rebellion. Oh, and there is also an interview with Booker Prize co-winner, and author of "The Handmaid's Tale" and "The Testaments", Margaret Atwood. Other writers featured in this episode include: Ali Smith, Naomi Alderman, Anjali Joseph, Irenosen Okojie, Robert Macfarlane, Romesh Gunesekera, Simon Schama, and comperes Simon McBurney and AL Kennedy. Extinction Rebellion has three demands. 1) Tell the Truth - Government must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change. 2) Act Now - Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025. 3) Beyond Politics - Government must create and be led by the decision of a Citizens' Assembly on climate and ecological justice. Producer / Presenter: Jessica Townsend Editor / Sound Engineer : Lucy Evans Social Media: Barney Weston

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival. Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At the Royal Grammar School, Enniskillen, the author Philip Hoare transcends the elements and talks about being shaped and reshaped by the sea. Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

Chloe is 16 and interested in an engineering career. She is also the daughter of Philip Hoare, President of engineering consultant Atkins. To find out more she digs deep into her Dad’s engineering life story by interviewing him about the projects that have shaped his career. From harrowing tragedy on a bridge project to world...

We were joined by Philip Hoare to revisit his modern classic Leviathan, the story of the writer’s obsession with whales and his fascination with Moby-Dick.

In episode three of our podcast, Helen Macdonald and Philip Hoare join host Razia Iqbal to discuss their prize-winning books, and Tom Tivnan looks at the impact of winning a prize for authors.

Irish author Kevin Barry, winner of the Impac Award and the Goldsmiths Prize, discusses his new novel Night Boat to Tangier, a dark comedy billed as Waiting For Godot meets In Bruges. Novelist and journalist Molly Flatt, who writes about culture and technology for the Bookseller, discusses a growing trend for book versions of successful podcasts. 25 years since the death of Derek Jarman, Mariella is joined by writers Philip Hoare and Mike Parker to explore queer nature writing, a genre concerned with the push and pull of the natural world, from a queer perspective.

Today I have three questions about the OCEAN and creatures in it! Because June 8th is World Oceans Day, a global celebration with hundreds of events around the world celebrating the ocean, including Everything Under The Sun with this show!Our first question comes from Emmeline and Elkie, they would like to know why the sea is salty? Our answer comes from Philip Hoare, a writer who loves the ocean and has written books about whales and the sea. He swims in the ocean every day, no matter the weather! He tells how the sea got so salty and how much salt is in the sea!Next up Archie would like to know why an octopus has three hearts? Find out what the three hearts are for as well as what colour an octopus' blood is, how many brains they have and how many arms and legs!Our last question is from Lachlan and he has a question about orcas! Which is, why are orca whales black and white? To answer it we have Richard Sabin, the Principal Curator of Mammals at the Natural History Museum in London, he knows everything there is to know about marine mammals including orcas and tells us all about counter shading and their colours! We also talked about orcas in the first episode of the podcast, in two questions – firstly we answered a question about whether orcas can talk to blue whales and secondly why they have white patches by their eyes, so do listen to that first episode of Everything Under The Sun to find out more about beautiful orcas!A huge thank you to Philip Hoare for talking to us about why the sea is salty and to Richard Sabin and the Natural History Museum for telling us about orcas! And of course a big thank you to Elkie, Emmeline, Archie and Lachlan for this week's questions! I'll be back with a next brand new episode for Fathers day answering more questions from children around the world in another episode of EUTS. Do send in your questions, there's info about how to do that on the show's website, everythingunderthesun.co.uk.Remember, the questions will now also be in a BOOK, I need all the questions soon as I'm busy writing away so please do send them in as soon as you can!If you like the show people do rate, review and subscribe and tell all your friends to do the same, it really does help!Thank you, have a lovely week and GOODBYE! Philip Hoare: http://www.philiphoare.co.ukmy instagram: @mollyoldfieldwritestwitter: @mollyoldfieldwww.everythingunderthesun.co.ukwww.mollyoldfield.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

El podcast setmanal dirigit i presentat per Felip Bens, junt amb Josep Vicent Miralles, està hui dedicat a les balenes, de la mà de Philip Hoare, autor d'un llibre que ja és una referència indefugible: Leviatà o La balena. Escolta tots els programes de Ferits de lletra en Plaza Radio o subscriu-te per a rebre'ls per Whatsapp, enviant-ne un al 605 663 670 i posant el text Sóc lletraferida / Sóc lletraferit.El podcast Ferits de lletra: L'home que nadava amb les balenes ha sido publicado en Plaza Radio

Few write with as much passion and fascination about the sea as British author Philip Hoare, who swims in the ocean every day, regardless of the season. His hugely acclaimed Leviathan, or the Whale won the Samuel Johnson Prize and introduced us to Hoare’s eclectic style of biography, literary criticism, social history and nature writing, which carried through to The Sea Inside. His latest book, RisingTideFallingStar, includes ‘fantastical stories of drowned poets, eccentric artists and magical animals, slipping between species and gender, all bound by the profound ocean’. Philip chats with Kim Hill in a not-to-missed conversation.

Published in 2005, The Book Thief was an international bestseller that went on to become a successful Hollywood film. Now more than a decade later its author, Markus Zusak, is back with a new story, Bridge of Clay, about how five brothers deal with the disappearance of their father.American playwright Sarah DeLappe discusses her award-winning debut play, The Wolves, as it transfers to the UK. Played out through conversations that happen between the players of an American high school girls' soccer team, it paints a portrait of young womanhood today.As the centenary approaches of the death of the poet Wilfred Owen on the Western Front, just a week before the end of hostilities in WW1, writers Philip Hoare and David Charters discuss two projects they've been working on that focus on his life and work. David's play A Dream of Wilfred Owen forms part of the Wilfred Owen Commemoration on the Wirral, while Philip's short film I Was a Dark Star Always pays tribute to the poet, part of which was shot at the French canal where Owen died.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Ben Mitchell

Philip Hoare talks about his book risingtidefallingstar, a prose poem to our enduring fascination with the deep and its creatures. Recorded on Saturday 6th October 2018.

Sharks have long held a prominent place in mythology, the imagination and even religion for centuries. As The Meg, a thriller about a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark, hits cinema screens nature writer Philip Hoare and film critic Isabel Stevens discuss the ways in which sharks have been represented in the arts. How much is the cultural representation of these 400 million year old mysterious creatures of the deep a reflection of our own human fantasies and anxieties?This year the distinguished composer Thea Musgrave celebrated her 90th birthday. The event is being marked with a series of special performances including Turbulent Landscapes, her sequence of movements inspired by the land and seascapes of JMW Turner, at the Edinburgh Festival. She talks to Front Row about her career: her work, her teachers, her inspirations and why she puts drama at the heart of her work.Award winning mentalist and illusionist Derren Brown reveals what it is that inspires his work on stage and screen and the art he creates in his spare time as both a painter and street photographer.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

In 1986, having just been diagnosed with HIV, the artist, film-maker and writer Derek Jarman decided to create a garden at his home on the bleak, beautiful coast at Dungeness. Modern Nature, his journal of a year in that garden, and a moving account of coming to terms with his own (and everything else’s) mortality, was first published in 1991, and now appears in a new edition from Vintage Classics. In her introduction Olivia Laing describes it as ‘the most beautiful and furious book of all time’. To celebrate the life and work of this unique and uniquely talented artist, almost a quarter century after his death, we were joined by Olivia Laing, author of The Lonely City, Philip Hoare, whose book Leviathan won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2006, and film-maker Sarah Wood. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Diving from Tudor times through the Brooklyn Naval Yard in the Second World War to present day deep water sculpture parks and swimming with whales. Rana Mitter talks to prize-winning writer Jennifer Egan about the Sea as metaphor and how the research for her latest novel, Manhattan Beach, was the inspiration for its time-shifting, punky, award-laden predecessor, The Goon Squad. He hears from historian Miranda Kaufmann about the existence of a black population of skilled workers in Tudor England, one of whom dived salvage on the wreck of the Mary Rose after she sank laden with cannons on her way to wage war against the French. And he's joined by marine biologist, Alex Rogers, writer and whale lover Philip Hoare, and Jason de Caires Taylor, creator of the world's first underwater sculpture parks to discuss why decades after we first saw our blue and watery planet hanging in space, we still find it easier to ignore our oceans than explore them.

Philip Hoare joined us to discuss the astonishing RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR a portrait of the subtle, beautiful, inspired and demented ways in which we have come to terms with our watery planet.

Philip Hoare, who won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2009 for his magnificent Leviathan, continues his exploration of our watery world with RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR (Fourth Estate). In searching the past and present for stories encapsulating the human fascination with the sea, Hoare mixes natural history with travel writing, autobiography and literary criticism to create an invigorating portrait of the oceans, and of their often fatal allure. He was in conversation with Olivia Laing, author of The Lonely City, The Trip to Echo Spring and To the River. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Shahidha Bari discusses LGBTQ in the history of philosophy.As part of the BBC's Queer Icons series Philosopher Sophie-Grace Chappell discusses Plato's Symposium, and novelist Adam Mars-Jones talks about Bruce Bagemihl's book Biological Exuberance which explored homosexuality in the animal kingdom. Plus, we hear from the winner of this year's Caine Prize for African Writing. Queer Icons is a project to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in which 50 leading figures choose an LGBTQ artwork that is special to them. You can find more details on the Front Row website on BBC Radio 4. You can find the BBC's Gay Britannia season of programmes on radio and tv collected on the website. They include documentaries, Drama on 3 from Joe Orton and exploring Victim the 1961 film starring Dirk Bogarde, episodes of Words and Music and more editions of Free Thinking including Philip Hoare on Cecil Beaton, Jake Arnott on Joe Orton and Peggy Reynolds on Sappho. Producer: Luke Mulhall

I see that Philip Hoare is publishing the third volume of his trilogy about the sea next week. RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR comes nine years after his award-winning book on the culture and history of whales, Leviathan, so I though I would re-present the interview I did with Philip about that book back then in a coffee shop in Bath (to listen click on the player above or download here)… As the publisher’s blurb puts it: The story of a man’s obsession with whales, which takes him on a personal, historical and biographical journey – from his childhood to his fascination with Moby-Dick and his excursions whale-watching. All his life, Philip Hoare has been obsessed by whales, from the gigantic skeletons in London’s Natural History Museum to adult encounters with the wild animals themselves. Whales have a mythical quality – they seem to elide with dark fantasies of sea-serpents and antediluvian monsters that swim in our collective unconscious. In ‘Leviathan’, Philip Hoare seeks to locate and identify this obsession. What impelled Melville to write ‘Moby-Dick’? After his book …

The Punjabi "Romeo and Juliet" is explored at Bradford Lit Fest plus New Generation Thinker Catherine Fletcher talks to Jonathan Dollimore about his memoir and the influence of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence which he set up at Sussex University. The Greek poet Sappho is championed by Professor Margaret Reynolds as part of Queer Icons - a project to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in which 50 leading figures choose an LGBT artwork that is special to them. And Rohit Dasgupta from Loughborough University talks about his research published in Digital Queer Cultures in India. Jonathan Dollimore's Memoir is called Desire. Waris Shah's Heer Ranja is discussed at Bradford Lit Fest by Mahmood Awan, Avaes Mohammad and Pritpal Singh on Saturday, 8th July 2017 2:45 pm - 4:00 pm at Bradford College - ATC. One of the definitive works of the Sufiana tradition it's an epic love poem set in 18th-century undivided Punjab. You can find more information about Queer Icons on the Front Row website. You can hear Catherine Fletcher chairing a Free Thinking discussion about Women's Voices in the Classical World recorded with Bettany Hughes, Paul Cartledge and Colm Toibin at the Hay Festival on the Free Thinking website. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08rsrlt You can find the BBC's Gay Britannia season of programmes on radio and tv collected on the website. They include documentaries, Drama on 3, episodes of Words and Music and more editions of Free Thinking including Philip Hoare on Cecil Beaton, Jake Arnott on Joe Orton and Sophie-Grace Chappell on Plato. Producer Craig Smith

Matthew Sweet talks to Philip Hoare about literary history and the ocean. Poet Elizabeth Jane Burnett performs snippets from her collection, Swims. Writer Jake Arnott reassesses the film Prick Up Your Ears as it's re-released in cinemas. Continuing the 'Queer Icon' series, Philip Hoare plumps for Cecil Beaton's image of Stephen Tennant. Philip Hoare's new book is called RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTARQueer Icons is a project to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in which 50 leading figures choose an LGBTQ artwork that is special to them. You can find more details on the Front Row website on BBC Radio 4 and in the Gay Britannia collection of programmes from radio and television. The BFI is holding a series of Joe Orton events: Obscentities in Suburbia through August when Prick Up Your Ears is re-released in cinemas along with a Gross Indecency Season focusing on television and film made after the 1968 Act which partially decriminalised homosexuality. Drama on 3 - a Joe Orton double bill: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wn0lm Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary.Philip Hoare was thrown off his bike and spent a night in a hospital observation ward. The bed is tiny, the sheets strap him firmly in. Then he takes a look at his fellow patients ...Producer Duncan Minshull.

Libby Purves meets actor and writer Meera Syal; writer and director James Runcie; former soldier Elliot Ackerman and Philip Hoare, author, broadcaster and whale chaser. Philip Hoare is a writer and broadcaster. He narrates Chasing the Whale, a show inspired by the 19th century journeys of whaling ships from Britain to the South Seas. Philip's stories delve into the log books of history to tell of the dangers and hardships endured by the crews on their epic voyages. The author of the award-winning Leviathan and the Whale, he also recalls his own memories of swimming alongside whales. Chasing the Whale is on tour. James Runcie is a writer, director and filmmaker. He is the author of The Grantchester Mysteries series about full-time priest and part-time detective, Sidney Chambers. Inspired in part by his father, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie's experiences, the series is set in the 1950s. James is visiting professor at Bath Spa University. The second series of Grantchester, based on The Grantchester Mysteries, is on ITV with James Norton as Sidney Chambers. Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil is published by Bloomsbury. Elliot Ackerman is an author who spent eight years in the US military as an infantry and special operations officer. He served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and is the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor and the Purple Heart. His novel Green on Blue tells the story of an Afghan boy who joins a US-funded militia after his parents are killed and who finds himself trapped in a savage and complex war. Green on Blue is published by Daunt Books. Meera Syal CBE is an actor and writer. Her third novel, The House of Hidden Mothers, deals with the themes of late parenthood and surrogacy. Her first novel Anita and Me is based on her life growing up in Wolverhampton and is now a national curriculum set text. She has starred in the TV series The Kumars at No. 42 and Goodness Gracious Me. Her theatre work includes Beatrice in the RSC's Much Ado About Nothing and Zehrunnisa in David Hare's play, Behind the Beautiful Forevers at the National Theatre. She is appearing with Kenneth Branagh's theatre company as the nurse in Romeo and Juliet at London's Garrick Theatre. The House of Hidden Mothers is published by Black Swan. Producer: Paula McGinley.

Philip Hoare is the author of seven works of non-fiction, including an acclaimed biography of Noel Coward, and Leviathan or, The Whale, which won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. An experienced broadcaster, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three films for BBC’s Whale Night. He is Visiting Fellow at Southampton University, and Leverhulme Artist-in-residence at The Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2011. He is also co-curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read. His latest book, The Sea Inside, was published by Fourth Estate in June 2013. Also this week, columnist Deborah Orr talks about Kate Bush’s debut album The Kick Inside. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What kind of pressures do gay writers face, in terms of their subject matter, and how they portray gay characters in their books? Philip Hoare has written about the sea and whales as well as biographies of Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde, while Val McDermid has included gay and straight characters in her novels. Here they discuss the limits and freedoms - both internal and external - that come with being a gay writer. Chaired by Alexandra Heminsley. Check out all the other podcasts in the 'Live from Guadalajara' series: soundcloud.com/britishcouncil/sets/live-from-guadalajara-book-fair

Check out all the other podcasts in the 'Writers in Conversation' series: http://soundcloud.com/britishcouncil/sets/writers-in-conversation Find out more on our literature site: http://literature.britishcouncil.org

Philip Hoare (born 1958, Southampton) is the author of six works of non-fiction: Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1990) and Noel Coward: A Biography (1995), Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the First World War (1997), Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital (2000), and England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005). Leviathan or, The Whale (2008), won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. An experienced broadcaster, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three films for BBC’s Whale Night. He is Visiting Fellow at Southampton University, and Leverhulme Artist-in-residence at The Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honourary doctorate in 2011. He is also co-curator, with Angela Cockayne, of the Moby-Dick Big Read, www.mobydickbigread.com

Philip Hoare and Merlin Holland discuss Wilde's tumultuous year. With Shahidha Bari.

This week, various authors remember a significant swimming experience:5. Author and journalist Philip Hoare would avoid the water. He overcame his fear and started to swim everywhere. But what compelled him to jump into Southampton Water?Producer Duncan Minshull.

Philip Hoare talks about his journeys with whales. An experienced broadcaster, curator and filmmaker, Philip Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read, www.mobydickbigread.com 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Geoff Dyer’s latest book Another Great Day at Sea (Visual Editions), illustrated with the photographs of Chris Steele-Perkins, recounts daily life aboard an American aircraft carrier the USS George H. W. Bush, on which Dyer spent time as a kind of writer in residence. Philip Hoare wrote of it in the Guardian: ‘This is beautiful writing. It is urgent, funny, utterly in-the-moment and achingly honest. … Like the captain, like the crew, like the ship, Dyer's superb book constantly reiterates its excellence. It virtually stands to attention on its own.’ Geoff Dyer came to the Bookshop to speak about the project with Chris Mitchell. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...5. Philip Hoare is quickly at the water's edge in Sholing, well before the waking hour. Then meetings with many animals are recalled.Producer Duncan Minshull.

To mark the paperback publication of Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author Philip 'Leviathan' Hoare’s acclaimed new book The Sea Inside, we held an evening exploring the wondrous world of whales. One of our best non-fiction writers and a fine broadcaster, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick and directed three films for BBC’s ‘Whale Night’. He was also co-curator, with Angela Cockayne, of the Moby-Dick Big Read . Artist film-maker Jessica Sarah Rinland focuses on whales in both long and short works. She presented a screening of her film A Boiled Skeleton, depicting the journey of a bottlenose whale, caught in 1860 and currently stored in the basement of UCL’s Grant Museum. Ex-whaler John Burton read live from the newspaper article that covered the whale’s journey. The evening was hosted by Gareth Evans. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Fiona Gruber talks with Noël Coward's biographer Philip Hoare about the work and life of 'The Master' and the very private life that created Private Lives.

With John Wilson. Following in the footsteps of Homer's Odyssey, Morrissey's Autobiography has been published as a Penguin Classic. The singer takes readers through his childhood in Manchester, The Smiths' success and subsequent court battles, insights into personal relationships - and unexpected stories, including an invitation to appear in Friends. Philip Hoare, a winner of The Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, reviews. Director Clio Barnard, who won acclaim for The Arbor, her portrait of the Bradford writer Andrea Dunbar, talks to John about her new film The Selfish Giant, loosely based on a story by Oscar Wilde, which now focuses on two boys lured into the world of scrap metal. Nelson, Navy, Nation is a new permanent gallery at the National Maritime Museum. Opening on Trafalgar Day (21 October) it looks at how the Royal Navy shaped individual lives and the course of British history in the 18th century - a period when sea-faring heroes were national celebrities. Naval historian Dr Sam Willis reviews. Tonight's edition of Glee is a tribute to actor Cory Monteith, who died earlier this year and who played the central role of Finn Hudson in the series. Boyd Hilton, TV editor of Heat magazine, discusses how programme-makers deal with unexpected tragedies or cast-absences in long running series. Producer Rebecca Nicholson.

D.H. Lawrence hailed Herman Melville's novella, Billy Budd, a masterpiece when it was first published in 1924. Then, in 1951, came Britten's opera, adapted from the book. The writers Philip Hoare and Jamila Gavin join Rana Mitter to explore the book's themes of good and evil, justice and the law and the actor Peter Marinker will be on hand to illustrate their remarks with readings from the book. Recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music as part of this year's Proms Plus events.

With John Wilson. In 2010 Dawn Brancheau, a trainer at the Seaworld theme park, died after being dragged into the water by Tilikum, Seaworld's largest performing Orca. A new documentary, Blackfish, explores how Tilikum came to be in captivity and asks whether whales kept as performing animals will inevitably become aggressive. Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan Or The Whale, reviews. The vocal group Naturally 7 are about to perform at this year's BBC Proms. They demonstrate how they create the sounds of a variety of instruments using just their voices, and reveal how they build up a song, layer by layer. A big new library is the flagship project of Birmingham City Council's plans for the regeneration of the city. Ahead of the opening early in September, John takes a tour of the £188 million building, with project director Brian Gambles, and Birmingham-born author Jonathan Coe. Author Kamila Shamsie reveals her Cultural Exchange choice: the 1950 classic movie All About Eve, with Bette Davis as an aging Broadway star. Producer Rebecca Nicholson.

Anne McElvoy discusses ethics and the law after several politicians have complained recently about tax avoidance by big companies. To discuss are Geoffrey Robertson QC, Mark Littlewood and Angie Hobbs. Australian writer Andrew Upton talks about his sometimes controversial adaptations of classic Russian plays and explains to Anne why he inserted an egg fight into his recent production of Maxim Gorky's Children of the Sun. And writer Philip Hoare explores his fascination and fear of the sea when he talks to Anne about his new book; "The Sea Inside".

With Mark Lawson Animator Nick Park has adapted his most famous characters Wallace & Gromit for the small screen, the big screen, the BBC Proms and now the theme park. He invites Mark to take a turn on his new ride - the Thrill-O-Matic - as it opens at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. More from the Cultural Exchange project, in which 75 leading creative minds share their passion for a book, film, poem, piece of music or other work of art. Tonight Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, selects the groundbreaking sci-fi novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. The 1937 book is a history of life in the universe, in which a human from England is transported out of his body and finds himself able to explore space and other planets. Considered by Arthur C Clarke as one of the finest science fiction books ever written, Star Maker also was loved by Winston Churchill and Virginia Woolf. Nicholas Hytner gives Othello a modern military setting, in a new staging starring Adrian Lester in the title role, with Rory Kinnear as Iago. Hermione Lee assesses whether this National Theatre production casts a fresh light on the play. ITV's latest sitcom, Vicious, features Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi as an elderly gay couple, with Frances de la Tour as their best friend. Writer and critic Philip Hoare has watched it and discusses whether Vicious lives up to its name. Producer Ekene Akalawu.

With John Wilson. David Cameron, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton and David Attenborough are among 135 people each reading a chapter a day of Herman Melville's epic novel Moby Dick, on a website curated by writer and whale enthusiast Philip Hoare. He talks about choosing an appropriate reading for the Prime Minister, and pairing chapters with works by artists such as Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Tony Oursler - director of the video for David Bowie's new single - who created today's image of a whale's eye. To mark the 150th birthday of the London Underground tomorrow, John and author Iain Sinclair go down the escalators to discuss the Tube's contribution to our culture, from the graphic-design, murals and architecture at the stations themselves, to the ways the Tube has cropped up in art, books and films - from Henry Moore's wartime drawings to American werewolves chasing hapless commuters. Utopia is a new TV thriller which focuses on a mysterious graphic novel and the sinister events that befall a group of people when they get hold of an original manuscript of it. Graphic novel enthusiast Rachel Cooke gives her verdict. Winner of the 2013 Brits Critics' Choice award Tom Odell has been writing music since he was 13. Now aged 22, he signed a record deal after four gigs. He discusses his debut EP Songs From Another Love, and the expectations that can accompany a high-profile award. Producer Olivia Skinner.

Philip Hoare was born and brought up in Southampton, where he still lives. His books include Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital (2001), which W.G. Sebald praised for its “unique sense of time and place, and great depth of vision” and Leviathan or, The Whale which won the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. You can hear my interview with Philip in which we talk about whales, Melville and Moby-Dick by clicking here. Here are his summer reading recommendations: Having just returned from a book tour of New England – a place haunted by its past, and by its whales – I’m deep in Mary K. Bercaw Edwards’ Cannibal Old Me: Spoken Sources in Melville’s Early Works, (Kent State University Press, $49). I picked up the book in the Whaling Museum in Nantucket, an island out of time where even billionaires’ SUVs are subjected to 18th-century cobblestones in the street, and where, courtesy of the Nantucket Historical Association, I stayed in Thomas Macey’s house, where Melville himself dined in 1852. (I was woken …

Philip Hoare’s Leviathan was my favourite non-fiction title of last year, so I am delighted to hear that it has just won this year’s Samuel Johnson prize. You can hear the interview I did with Philip earlier this year here.