Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, was born in Paris in 1694, dying there in 1778 aged 83. A celebrated philosopher, poet, and writer, he was arrested in 1726 as part of a feud with Guy Auguste de Rohan-Chabot. Imprisoned in the Bastille, he requested exile in Great Britain rather than prolonged incarceration. Voltaire spent two and a half years in England, during which he wrote a series of letters home on his observations of eighteenth century Britain.