Dr Richard Hamblyn

Overview

Biography

I am an environmental writer and historian, with a particular interest in the cultural cross-currents that run between the arts and the sciences. My books include The Invention of Clouds, which won the 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; Terra: Tales of the Earth (2009), a study of natural disasters, and The Art of Science: a Natural History of Ideas (2011), an anthology of readable science writing from the Babylonians to the Higgs boson. I've also written several illustrated books on weather in association with the UK Met Office, and edited Daniel Defoe's first book, The Storm (1704) for Penguin Classics (2005).

More recently, my monograph Clouds: Nature and Culture, came out in 2017, with a companion volume, The Sea: Nature and Culture, published in 2021. Current writing projects include a history of meteorology and a book of (mostly) true stories about real and imagined places.

Highlights

Here is a link to an animated short I wrote for TedEd about the naming of clouds in 1802:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuW1jhxCgx0
And here is a link to an article on the cultural legacy of Albert Einstein that I wrote and recorded for BBC Radio 3's 'The Essay' series.
You can read a fun London Review of Books essay review on the life cycle of the Atlantic salmon here: link
Here's a link to an article I wrote about the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins's letters describing the Krakatoa sunsets of 1883.

Web profiles

My personal website

Professional memberships

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (since 2011)

Research

Research interests

Creative Non-fiction
Weather and climate
Environmental writing
Nature and culture

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:: 4

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any area of environmental writing / cultural geography. Prospective PhD students should submit an informal inquiry, followed by a proposal of 2,000-4,000 words, including an indicative bibliography.

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

GOLNOOSH NOURPANAH

Nature of supervision:
Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2014 to Sep 2016

Awarded:
2019
LEE CHRISTIEN

Nature of supervision:
Principal Supervisor, Oct 2016

Title of thesis:
Captives of Classification: Unlocking the Representations of Animals from the Daily Occurrences, Library, and Cages of London Zoo.

Awarded:
2021
LILY DUNN

Nature of supervision:
Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2017

Awarded:
2023
MELANIE JONES

Nature of supervision:
Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2023

Awarded:
2025

Teaching

I teach on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules in English, Theatre, and Creative Writing, mostly in the realm of prose non-fiction, but also venturing into fiction and other forms, including poetry, graphic works and verbatim drama.

Teaching modules

Storytelling: Narrative Archetypes, Forms and Techniques
Creative Non-Fiction
The Arts: Perspectives and Possibilities
Narrative Methods
Fiction Workshop 1

Publications

Article

Hamblyn, Richard (2022) Dove ci sono le onde troverete storie. The Passenger (20), pp. 30-45.
Hamblyn, Richard (2022) Luke Howard, namer of clouds. Weather 77 (11), pp. 376-379. ISSN 1477-8696.
Hamblyn, Richard (2019) How much are they paying you?. The Mechanics Institute Review (16), pp. 1-14.
Hamblyn, Richard (2019) Diamonds in the sky. Countryfile (154), pp. 56-60. ISSN 1752-7287.
Prata, F. and Robok, A. and Hamblyn, Richard (2018) The sky in Edvard Munch's "The Scream". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 99, pp. 1378-1390. ISSN 0003-0007.
Hamblyn, Richard (2014) Die Krakatau-Briefe von Gerard Manley Hopkins. Sinn und Form 66 (3), pp. 375-378. ISSN 0037-5756.
Hamblyn, Richard (2009) The whistleblower and the canary: rhetorical constructions of climate change. Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2), pp. 223-236. ISSN 0305-7488.
Hamblyn, Richard (2008) Notes from underground: Lisbon after the earthquake. Romanticism 14 (2), pp. 108-118. ISSN 1354-991X.

Book

Hamblyn, Richard (2021) The sea: nature and culture. Earth. London: Reaktion Books. ISBN 9781789144871.
Hamblyn, Richard (2021) The Met Office cloud book: how to understand the skies. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. ISBN 9781446308905.
Hamblyn, Richard (2017) Clouds: nature and culture. Earth. London, UK: Reaktion Books. ISBN 9781780237237.
Hamblyn, Richard (2014) Tsunami: nature and culture. Earth. London, UK: Reaktion. ISBN 9781780233475.
Hamblyn, Richard (2011) The art of science: a natural history of ideas. London: Picador. ISBN 9780330490764.
Hamblyn, Richard and Callanan, M.J. (2010) Data soliloquies. London, UK: Slade Press. ISBN 9780903305044.
Hamblyn, Richard (2009) Terra: tales of the Earth. London: Picador. ISBN 9780330490733.
Hamblyn, Richard (2002) The invention of clouds: how an amateur meteorologist forged the language of the skies. London, UK: Picador. ISBN 978033039195502.

Book review

Hamblyn, Richard (2021) Hunting for snow.
Hamblyn, Richard (2019) And now the weather: how technology helped us to predict.
Hamblyn, Richard (2019) Flights of fancy: victorian science and meteorological adventure.
Hamblyn, Richard (2018) Between extinction and myth: birds, books and the great chain of being: Mark Dion's natural preoccupations.
Hamblyn, Richard (2017) 'Con fuoco'.
Hamblyn, Richard (2016) Moon's Cosmic Leash.
Hamblyn, Richard (2015) Watchers of the skies.

Book section

Hamblyn, Richard (2025) “The Service of Clouds”: art, science and the sky. In: Graham, E. (ed.) Clouds: How to Identify Nature’s Most Fleeting Forms. Princeton, U.S.: Princeton University Press. pp. 6-10. ISBN 9780691262482.
Hamblyn, Richard (2022) Behold... The Sea. In: BBC Proms Guide 2022. BBC Publications. pp. 104-107. ISBN 9781912114115.
Hamblyn, Richard (2014) The Krakatoa sunsets. In: Green, A. (ed.) The Public Domain Review Selected Essays: The First Three Years: 2011-2013. Cambridge, UK: PDR Press. pp. 146-153. ISBN 9772056953005.
Hamblyn, Richard and Southam, J. (2012) The river - Winter. In: The River - Winter. London, UK: Mack Books. pp. 87-94. ISBN 9781907946288.

Letter

Hamblyn, Richard (2016) Forum response - 'Reporting on Climate Change'. Issues in Science and Technology 32 (3), National Academy of Sciences (US); Wiley. ISSN 0748-5492.