Name

He was born Patrick Moore. He chose the name Philip Hoare to avoid confusion with astronomer Patrick Moore:

Imagine having to spend your entire life living with people asking: 'You're not that astronomer, are you?' Or: 'Do you play the xylophone?' Another reason was that when I was managing bands I used to review my own bands for the NME and Sounds as Philip Hoare. Philip was my confirmation name; Hoare my mother's maiden name.

Life

Hoare was born in Southampton and attended St Mary's College.

In 1982-83, he ran the record label Operation Twilight, a UK-based subsidiary of the Belgian Les Disques du Crépuscule, which launched the career of the Pale Fountains. In 2009 he exhibited artworks made with Angela Cockagne at Viktor Wynd Fine Art Inc in London

Works

Hoare is the author of seven works of non-fiction: Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1990); Noël 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), the story of Netley Hospital in Bristol; and England’'s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005) about Mary Anne Girling and the New Forest Shakers. Leviathan or, The Whale (2008), won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. His most recent book is The Sea Inside (2013).

Other projects

He has been interested by cetaceans since early childhood. He wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three films for BBC'’s Whale Night.

Between 2011-12, his self-professed 'whale obsession' led him to create the Moby Dick Big Read. The project, curated by Hoare and artist Angela Cockayne, involved the construction of an online audiobook of all 135 chapters of Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick; or, the Whale. The readings were delivered by a multitude of celebrities, including Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry, Sir David Attenborough, John Waters, Simon Callow and David Cameron, and accompanied by images from contemporary artists such as Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley, George Shaw and Susan Hiller. The readings were uploaded to the Moby Dick Big Read website, with one chapter available for download per day from 16 September 2012. All downloads are free but donations are invited to 'Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society' (WDCS).

Hoare is a contributor to the animal news site,The Dodo.

Publications

• Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1990)
• Noel Coward: A Biography (1995)
• The Sayings of Noel Coward (1997)
• Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy and the First World War (1997)
• Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital (2001)
• "Pet Shop Boys - Release" (2002)
• The Ghosts of Netley (2004)
• England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005)
• Linder Works 1976-2006 (with Jon Savage, Lynne Tillman, Paul Bayley, Andrew Renton and Morrissey) (2006)
• Gabriel Orozco (with Mark Godfrey) (2006)
• Pet Shop Boys: Catalogue (with Chris Heath) (2006)
• Leviathan or, The Whale (2008)
• "The Whale: In Search Of The Giants Of The Sea" (2010)
• The Sea Inside (2013)

[ Source: Wikipedia ]