Voltaire

While at St Andrews during the 1970s, Voltaire was one of my set authors, and I wrote an essay on him and Bertrand Russell for the Edinburgh Speculative Society in 1979. This excellent and engaging overview portrays Voltaire as the most media savvy writer of his age who, like Goethe, achieved European fame at the early age of 24. His output as a poet, dramatist and writer was prodigious by any standard. The author begins with theatre, showing how Voltaire was essentially a performer, whether on or off stage. I had not realised that he performed in many of his own plays. His acerbic wit or corrosive ridicule was always getting him into trouble, and his trip to England was precipitated by one such incident. It proved to be hugely important, as he became the spokesman not only for a more tolerant society, but also for the ideas of Newton - it was very interesting to learn that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1743, largely for his account of Newton's work.

In his own time, he was famous as a campaigner, perhaps most so in the Calas affair, a good example of the dogmatism and fanaticism that he relentlessly opposed. He knew how to engage public opinion and shape it. Sometimes, he even denied authorship of some of his work, but his style was unmistakable. His best-known work, Candide, appeared in 17 editions in its first year of publication, including three different English translations. The author remarks that Candide was subject to 'a crash course in evil and human cruelty', staggering from battlefield to earthquake. Part of his output and influence stems from around 16,000 letters - his complete works are some 200 volumes in the new Oxford edition. I agree with the author that his legacy is most in terms of his voice, 'a tool for debunking self-important authority with scepticism and irony' - little of his work is still read. As well as a masterly summary of Voltaire's life, the reader gains a much better understanding of 18th-century France and Europe.