Rising tide falling star

By Philip Hoare Fourth Estate, £16.99

Philip Hoare returns to the themes of several of his previous books in this ode to the beauty and cruelty of the sea. His obsession with whales is perpaps a more obvious link to the ocean than stories about writer Oscar Wilde and socialite Stephen Tennant, but Hoare’s tales about other humans are still fascinating, as are his musings on works of fiction. Hoare also describes his own obsession with the sea through regular swims and the rather disturbing tales of dead creatures he finds on the shore. He describes pulling off a bird’s head, gouging out a deer’s eye and poking his fingers inside a dead dolphin’s genitals “out of prurient curiosity”.