The meeting of Voltaire, successful financier, famous poet and troublemaker, and
the enchanting amateur physicist and countess Emilie du Chatelet, was a meeting
of both hearts and minds. In the Chateau de Cirey, the two brilliant intellects
scandalised the French aristocracy with their passionate love affair and provok
ed revolutions both political and scientific with their groundbreaking work in l
iterature, philosophy and physics. Nancy Mitford's account of the love affair of
the Enlightenment is, in the author's own words, 'a shriek from beginning to en
d'.
