Some of us were playing a silly game over dinner last night with the portraits of Trinity College notables (including Newton and Macaulay) who watch over the dining room of the Master’s Lodge:
If they were CEOs of modern companies, which modern company would you select for each portrait? A long-haired Isaac Barrow won ”Microsoft” (he looks surprisingly like a young Bill Gates), while a nearby notable (who shall remain nameless here) suggested “Enron.”
For “Google” both Frank and I picked a serene, mild Elizabethan who turned out to be Lord Coke. If he is in fact Sir Edward Coke he was famous for his savagery as a prosecutor, his extension of the Magna Carta principles, and the catch-phrase “a man’s home is his castle.”
People are more complicated than they appear.