A C Grayling

The Ambassador of Utopia

Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom

By

Bloomsbury 447pp £18.99 order from our bookshop

In the summer of 1739 Voltaire and his extraordinary and brilliant mistress, Emilie du Châtelet, made a brief sojourn in Brussels. While there Voltaire styled himself ‘the Ambassador of Utopia’ on his invitation cards, and found to his amusement that hardly anyone got the joke – they did not know what ‘Utopia’ meant or where it was. Yet in the light of Voltaire’s lifelong utopian quest for freedom – of thought, of conscience, of expression, of love, of the individual, of nations, of mankind at large – the title he adopted in jest surely applies in earnest.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'The erecting and immediate destruction of a series of straw men rather detracts from what is for the most part an… ,
    • RT : A magnificent demolition job on this "acid laced tirade...unpleasantly self-obsessed...self pitying polemic...book… ,
    • 'Seventy years on, the time we have left to gather such first-hand testimony is running out.' John Keay on the sig… ,
    • The author 'seethes with contemptuous indignation at the shiny junk that an unregulated construction industry dumps… ,
    • 'The physical courage he demonstrated as a young man [...] gave way to intellectual power; radical thought, gifted… ,
    • 'While Jane Austen didn’t perhaps achieve the full recognition that she deserved in her lifetime, even then she out… ,
    • 'All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And t… ,
    Follow Us