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The Lunar Men: The friends who made the future by Jenny Uglow, Faber and Faber, 拢25, ISBN 0571196470

ANGLO-SAXONS like me tend to be sniffy about the Enlightenment. Like sex in the afternoon, it鈥檚 the kind of thing we鈥檇 rather leave to Continentals (and Scots). The late Roy Porter dragged us from our closet. In Enlightenment, he showed that the Enlightenment was as much a phenomenon of 18th-century England as of France, Prussia and Scotland. He gave particular credit to a 鈥済athering of Midlands intellectual aristocracy鈥� called the Lunar Society, so named because it met in Birmingham each month on the Monday closest to the full Moon.

Now, Jenny Uglow鈥檚 sparkling group biography brings these Lunar luminaries to life. What a group it was. Among the principal Lunar men were Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood, self-made industrialists; Erasmus Darwin, doctor and larger-than-life genius; James Watt, dour, finicky hands-on inventor; and Joseph Priestly, dissenting visionary.

According to Uglow, this small group of friends was at the leading edge of almost every movement in science, industry, politics and the arts from the 1760s to the beginning of the 19th century. Uglow has a point. In our own time, when too many intellectuals boast of knowing nothing of science, the Lunar Men鈥檚 range of interest seems extraordinary. 鈥淥ne person鈥檚 passion 鈥� be it carriages, steam, minerals, chemistry, clocks 鈥� fired all the others. Letters鈥�were a kaleidoscope of invention and ideas, touching on steam engines and cylinders; cobalt as a semi-metal; how to boil down copal, the resin of tropical trees, for varnish; lenses and clocks and colours for enamels; alkali and canals; acids and vapours 鈥� as well as the boil on Watt鈥檚 nose.鈥�

But how they found the time defies explanation: these men had to work for a living. On top of a busy medical practice, Darwin devoted two hours a day to treating charity patients. Wedgwood鈥檚 recreation was hard work in the fields. (On one leg: the other had been amputated, with the patient watching with interest.)

Science for the Lunar Men was a physical as well as a mental pursuit. We have Darwin 鈥渋n wig and breeches, sweating under his flapping topcoat鈥� mineral hunting in the Peak District, setting off a train of thought that would culminate in his family motto E Conchis Omnia (Everything from shells), which would inspire his grandson Charles.

And, once a month, the meetings. What Uglow can鈥檛 give us, of course, is a word-for-word account of what took place. But she can set the scene: 鈥淭he wine flowed鈥�and the tables were heavy with fish and capons, Cheddar and Stilton, pies and syllabubs. But when the meal was cleared away, out came the instruments, the plans and the models, the minerals and machines.鈥�

It couldn鈥檛 last. Time and mortality took their toll. Intellectual times changed, too. Perhaps the new 鈥淔rench chemistry鈥�, with its elaborate, expensive equipment and precise terminology marked the beginning of the end. Finally, there was the changing political climate. Lunar friendships proved remarkably resistant to political upheaval, from the War of American Independence, where sympathy with the rebels and commercial pragmatism clashed with patriotism, to the French Revolution.

But as revolutionary war consumed Europe, the light faded. Priestley鈥檚 house and laboratory were burnt by anti-Jacobins and he left for London. The rioters鈥� cry, 鈥淣o philosophers 鈥� Church and King forever鈥�, was a shock to those who believed in science as a synonym for tolerance and progress.

And ahead lay the 19th century, with its industrial horrors and new intellectual blinkers. No longer could a single enlightened mind roam the frontiers of human understanding.

Or could it? In her prologue, Uglow suggests that the 鈥渇ast, collaborative intimacy of the Internet鈥� may revive the spirit of the Lunar Men. She must see different newsgroups to me. Lunar Men are rare in any age.