By The Economist
“All my possessions for a moment of time.” Those, supposedly, were the last words of Elizabeth I, who as queen of England had enough possessions to be one of the richest women of her era. Given her patronage of alchemists—who searched, among other things, for an elixir of life—she may have meant it literally. But to no avail. She had her last moment of time in March 1603, a few months short of the three score years and ten asserted by the Bible to be “the days of our years”.
Things have improved since the reign of Good Queen Bess.