I have read a good share of Strathern's short works on the great philosophers. I have the feeling that the more interesting the life and character of the philosopher discussed the better the volume. For some reason Hume is for me a very interesting, and admirable character even though religiously I am totally on the other side of the fence. i.e. Strathern claims that Hume is the first philosopher who has the guts to come and say out and out that he is an atheist. I am a person who believes that without God not only I, but all of Humanity is lost.
In any case Strathern does a very good job of describing Hume's demolition of the idea of causality(There is sequence, before and after, without necessary connection between them) of continuity of objects, of induction( The fact that there has been night and day, night and day for so long as we know does not necessarily mean that the sun will come up tomorrow). He also does a wonderful job of providing the background to Hume's life in eighteenth century England. Hume whose greatest passion despite him in later years belonging to a group called 'The Eaterei' and being immensely corpulent was for ' literary fame' His first great work 'The Treatise on Human Nature' contained his major ideas but did not bring him the prize he sought.But by the time he wrote an'Enquiry on Human Understanding' he attained it. Also the author of a popular History of England Hume was that rare creature who achieves in his life precisely what he wanted to, and was famed, honored, celebrated and justly so.
This short work is a very good account of the life and clear exposition of those ideas, ideas which will make us forever think twice about, whether our world, and we ourselves are ' real 'or not.
But of course ' we are' and ' I wrote this review' and someone named 'Paul Strathern wrote a very good book ' about Hume.

Well, Strathern is certainly entertaining, if not informative. He gives us the dirt on each philosopher, tells us who was overweight, cheap, pushed people around, etc. This would be great if we were reading about movie stars or politicians but I bought these books in order to understand something about what these philosophers thought. He does reserve a few pages at the end of each volume to tells us one or two of their ideas and gives us a handful of quotes. A total waste of money unless you hate your philosophy classes so much that you want to hear how awful the personal lives of the philosophers were. A new low in publishing.