-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
In colorful prose and lively line drawings, Hoare sets out to rediscover the sea and its islands, birds, and beasts. Starting at his home on the shores of Britain's Southampton Water and moving in ever widening circles - like the migration patterns of whales - Hoare explores London, the Isle of Wight, the Azores, Sri Lanka, Tasmania, and New Zealand.
As Hoare brilliantly weaves together literary and natural history, we encounter memorable people as well as the dolphins, whales, and other creatures above and below the water (even one species formerly believed to be extinct).
Echoing the fine tradition of W. G. Sebald, but in a voice all Hoare's own, The Sea Inside is bursting with an endless series of delights and revelations from the ever-changing sea.
"Starred Review. Hoare's writing awakens the senses with visions, sounds, and smells of the ocean; his delight and interest in nature will encourage readers to look around with new eyes." - Publishers Weekly
"A beautifully written memoir/travelogue with readable diversions into philosophy." - Kirkus
"A magnificent book." - Financial Times
"A crammed treasure chest." - The London Review of Books
This information about The Sea Inside was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Philip Hoare lives and works in Southampton, England. He is the author of The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea, winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, as well as biographies of Noel Coward, Stephen Tennant, and a study of Oscar Wilde. He is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Southampton; artist in residence at the Marine Institute, Plymouth University; and cocurator of the Moby-Dick Big Read. Follow him on Twitter at @philipwhale.
If you liked The Sea Inside, try these:
by Hannah Stowe
Published 2025
A book to sweep you away from the shore, into a wild world of water, whale, storm, and starlight— to experience what it's like to sail for weeks at a time with life set to a new rhythm.
by Adam Nicolson
Published 2023
Adam Nicolson explores the marine life inhabiting seashore rockpools with a scientist's curiosity and a poet's wonder in this beautifully illustrated book.
by Samantha Hunt
Published 2019
Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit.
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading, you wish the author that wrote it was a ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
