R. D. V. Glasgow was born in Sheffield and studied French and German at St John’s College, Oxford. He has lived in Bonn, Berlin, Barcelona, Malaga and Madrid and currently resides in Zaragoza. He has written and published three books on comedy and philosophy: Madness, Masks and Laughter: an essay on comedy (1995), Split Down the Sides: on the subject of laughter (1997), and The Comedy of Mind: Philosophers stoned, or the pursuit of wisdom (1999). His most recent book is The Concept of Water (2009). He has been translating, on and off, since 1996, mainly from German but also from Spanish. He has recently specialized in palaeontology translation for a number of Spanish universities. He gives a course called ‘The Phylogeny of the Self’ for biologists at Würzburg University.