Philip Hoare was born and brought up in Southampton, where he still lives.

His books include Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant;(1990); Noel Coward: A Biography (1995), Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Consipiracy and the First World War; (1997), and Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital (2001), which W.G. Sebald praised its 'unique sense of time and place, and great depth of vision.' England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia, a study of 19 th century sects, was published in 2005. The Guardian called it 'profoundly suggestive', and The Observer concluded, ‘No one…could fail to be thrilled and quite possibly entranced by this remarkable volume'.

An extraordinary journey into the underwater world of the whale -- to tie in with a BBC film-length documentary hosted also by the author.

Leviathan or, The Whale was published in September 2008 and in 2009 won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. 'A superb book...This is the book [Philip Hoare] was born to write, a classic of its kind', Rachel Cooke wrote in The Observer. 'In Hoare's hands, whales are almost limitlessly strange and interesting', noted the Sunday Times.

On 20 September 2008, BBC 2 broadcast Arena: The Hunt for Moby-Dick, written and presented by the author, followed by ‘Whale Night’ on BBC 4, including three short films on baleen, toothed and Arctic whales, also directed by Philip Hoare.