Alison Martin (German) writes:

At the start of the year, I met up with Hilary Geoghegan from Geography who told me she was running a session on earth-writing for her 1st year geographers as part of her
GV1HUM Human Geography: Practice and Principles seminar. I’ve just spent the past six years researching style in the English translations of works by the great Prussian scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), who was obsessed with writing in an engaging way to make his works readable, enjoyable and (rather importantly) profitable. In this seminar we looked at reflections by Humboldt and his English contemporaries Michael Faraday and Charles Darwin on the difficulties of producing clear and vibrant prose – something we all grapple with as we write our essays, articles and books.