In this thread, binarydrome tells about an interview question his wife had.
He wanted to know what would be good answers for his wife to give in order to get the job; however, I thought it was a very interesting question. I didn’t want to hijack the thread, so I decided to start a new one on who you personally would want to invite to dinner (as opposed to who would look good to an employer).
I can’t seem to just pick six, but I can think of a few different dinner parties that I would love to have. These would be:
Dinner party 1:
Mary Queen of Scotland
Cleopatra
Marie Antoinette
Anne Boleyn
Empress Maud
Helen of Troy*
Dinner party 2:
Descartes
Darwin
Plato
Aristotle
Socrates
John Locke
Dinner Party 3:
John Knox
Martin Luther
Cardinal Richeleau
Pope Joan*
Gautama Buddha
A prophet from Apollo’s Oracle
*Please, no debates about whether she was real or not.
I’m curious to know, Monica, why such interest in Henry VIII’s wives? Just Anne Boleyn in your case, but I’ve seen other wives mentioned in other posts (I wouldn’t forget the Fourth Earl of You-Know-Where, a true innovator.).
I happen to find that time period incredibly interesting. I also would like to know the wive’s stories. What must have gone through their heads to know that they were going to be cast aside from their position of power simply because their child was the wrong sex? One of the reasons that Anne Boleyn popped into my head is that I’m currently reading The Other Boleyn Girl, a book about Anne’s sister (Mary Carey).
I like your selections, monica, but I guess I’d make my selection primarily on the basis of agreeable and interesting conversation. They need not necessarily be from one area of society only.
Assuming that the persons involved magically speak in tongues (or have a Babelfish or other device to understand each other):
Oscar Wilde (renowned as a conversationalist)
Plato
Goethe
Simone de Beauvoir
Hume
Madame de Sevigny
Damn, I notice that my selection is as one-sided as yours are.
Would probably be a bitch finding a menu all of them like
What! No Eleanor of Aquitaine!! I don’t know who I’d bump (okay, it would be Helen, she’s only known for her beauty after all), but Eleanor would be at my table.
Jesus
Buddha
Muhammad
Akhenaten
Martin Luther
William Faulkner (just because I love him–no doubt he would be drunk by the second course, and then I’d try to get him to make catty comments about Hemingway)
Oscar Wilde (famous conversationalist and wit)
Samuel Pepys (ditto and diarist)
GF Handel (the composer)
The Iron Lady - Margaret Thatcher
The Iron Duke - Arthur Wellesley
Winston Churchill
