18 MAY 1951, Page 4

I am increasingly doubtful whether Voltaire ever did use that

phrase about abominating your opinions but being ready to die for your right to hold them.. I am told it was first attributed to him in a volume entitled Voltaire and His Friends, by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, published in 1906. It is notoriously hard to prove a negative, but in the absence of specific direction to chapter and line containing the words in one or other of Voltaire's works, I am afraid their attribution to him will have to go by the board.

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