The Telegraph Creative Writing Group October Competition sets a theme of ‘Life Change’. I’ve had a story about Voltaire knocking around in my computer for a while, although it’s mostly concerned with the writing of his first drama ‘Oedipe’, interwoven with that of the relationship between the Duc d’Orleans and his daughter, the Duchesse de Berri.

I’ve just visited a good friend in the Hague, and as we were walking around the older parts of the city I started to think about Voltaire meeting his first love there, about 300 years ago. His late teens and early twenties make a great coming-of-age story. I hope I’ve done justice to it in ‘The Best of All Possible Worlds’.