Oooh, fun post.
Hmm, inviting Marilyn Monroe
and Elizabeth Taylor to the same table - you'd need a pretty big booze budget

Love the idea of a President from 100 years in the future - any person from 100 years in the future. What if no one turned up though? Would that be a sign that the world ended? Perhaps we all got ruptured after all?
Same if you invited Jesus and he didn't turn up - would that mean he, as a singular being, never existed? You'd spend the whole of the dinner party so caught up on that question that the other guests would go home
Bill Bailey could provide the after dinner music? On the horns! Or the Oud. Or the Tenori-on! That thing is
so cool.
Crickey, what a question. Eight people...
Well, hmmm.... It's difficult, do you invite the world's wisest and most profound people and have a really long, intellectual party. Or do you invite the hell-raisers and have a cracking good time that you probably won't remember in the morning...?
I suppose:
1. D. H. Lawrence. I recently said that if I could invite five people for dinner, he'd be one. So I guess I have to honour that.
2. Einstein, for a few reasons but mostly because he gave the following immortal quotes:
Quote:
"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."
I'd like to meet the mind that reasoned that.
3. The late, great
Terence McKenna, whose life and work were exceptional. I'd ask him the title of the book he mentions in
Schizophrenic or Shamanic? I'd love to overhear a discussion between him and Einstein.
4. Cleopatra. There's so much myth and mystery surrounding her times - I'd like to hear it all first-hand.
5. Che Guevara perhaps. I want to know what he'd have done differently in the Congo, and if he would still have gone to Bolivia if he'd known how it'd turn out. Whether the legacy was worth the sacrifice. I'd also like to overhear a conversation between him, as a revolutionary, and Cleopatra, as an autocrat.
6. Emily Brontë. Given that fiction is often selective reality, I'd like to know who formed her characters in
Wuthering Heights. Dish the dirt on the real people in her life. Whether she is surprised how famous she became - whether she ever thought it possible when receiving rejections and having to publish as a man. I'd like to know which books and authors she enjoys from today's pick.
7. Byron. Simply because he was an entertaining hell-raiser. I think he and Che would get on well and may leave the party early to go freedom fighting.
8. Finally... hmm.
My great grandmother on my father's side. Feisty lady. First in Carlisle to own a car. Left to become a nanny in Australia, but wound up treating soldiers on the front in Belgium where she met my great grandfather who eventually died there. I was born shortly after she died and I'd like to hear the story of our family from both perspectives - mine, and hers. See where they meet. I'd be careful not to leave her alone with Byron though.
There. I found it hard to start, but now it's difficult to stop! Might have to have a few dinners.
