14 The Times Magazinee had come a long way to this blue
lawn, and his dream must have
seemed so close that he could
hardly fail to grasp it,” is the quote
from The Great Gatsby Bill Gates
chose to have inscribed on the
dome of his library in Seattle.
Gates picked it, he once told me,
because Gatsby’s wooing of his
beloved Daisy reminded Bill and
Melinda of their courtship.
Didn’t he nearly have it all. A billionaire by
the time he was 31, the brilliant nerdy coder
always seemed to get everything right. His
company, Microsoft, led the tech boom but
being the richest man alive wasn’t enough.
Paintings, yachts and jets soon bored him;
he wanted to rescue the world too. In the
next three decades he gave away more than
$50 billion to help eradicate polio, eliminate
malaria and save millions of lives. He also
developed a reputation as a prophet, having
been one of the first to warn the world about
climate change and a global pandemic.
But it was his marriage to Melinda that set
him apart from the other Silicon Valley giants,
Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk. Bill and Melinda,
now 66 and 57, seemed like the perfect pair.
The first time I met Melinda French Gates, in
Seattle five years ago, we talked about Bill and
sex. “Of course, I absolutely use contraceptives,”
she told me, stressing the transformative effects
of birth control on developing countries. “Every
year more than a billion couples have sex and,
yes, not surprisingly, we do too.” The couple
appeared to adore each other. They had
matching glass offices with identical desks.
Every day they would drive home discussing
vaginal gels and sewerage systems and
how to save the world. She wasn’t just some
trophy wife. They had three children, Jennifer,
26, Rory, 22, and Phoebe, 19, and set up the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, becoming
the world’s greatest philanthropists.
The economics and computer science
graduate and former Microsoft employee
would tease her husband when he sounded
too pompous and kept him grounded and
normal. “He does the chores, takes the kids
to school and walks the dogs,” she told me.
This is a man who admits that as a cofounder
and chief executive of Microsoft, “I learnt all
my employees’ numberplates off by heart so
I could check what time they were leaving
every night.” When after seven years they
couldn’t decide whether to marry, he drew up
the pros and cons on a whiteboard.
Where he is more facts and stats, she is
more heart and emotion. “But inside was this
very tender, warm-hearted, curious person,”
Melinda said. To relax, they would meditate.
“Not cross-legged or anything but on chairs
next to each other,” Bill once explained to me.
They also set up a book club together.He appeared lucky in life “and love too”,
he said. Their marriage lasted 27 years. Then
a year ago, out of the blue, Melinda and Bill
announced they were separating. Suddenly
everything seemed to unravel. Gates was
accused of having spent time with the
financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein
before he died, a man Melinda called “evil
personified”, and there were rumours that
he may not have been faithful. Overnight
he seemed to slip from sainthood to sinner.
How could he have been so careless? I’ve
interviewed Gates five times over the past few
years, in London, Ethiopia and Seattle. He’s
a hard man not to like as he enthusiastically
bombards you with figures and graphs. He
never appears arrogant despite being fêted
by prime ministers and presidents. He is
punctilious and courteous, his staff adore him,
his mind is constantly whirling as he doodles
away on a notepad, though he does expect
everyone to keep up.
Now I would be interviewing him in New
York. I wondered whether I would be meeting
a different man. Would he be contrite or
cautious? We were meant to be discussing his
latest book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic.
He still loves gadgets. Before our appointment
he sends me an elaborate Covid test with
batteries and vials. When we meet at his hotel,
where he is promoting his book, he appears
the same, wearing his favourite V-neck
jumper, chinos and loafers and carrying a
white tote bag filled with reading material.
“You’ve had quite a couple of years,”
I suggest. “Not only has your marriage
unravelled, but your father died and while
trying to rescue the world from a pandemic
you have been attacked by antivaxers.”
He pauses. “It’s been pretty dramatic,”
he admits. “But the weirdest part has been
the kids leaving. The youngest just went
off to college. She always had ten friends over.
As I come out of the pandemic and we are
back to ‘normal’, it’s actually pretty different.”
His youngest, he adds, has just been to see
him in New York, “so I did get to do some
differential equations on infection models
with her. I enjoyed that quite a bit.”
But their vast house in Seattle suddenly
seems very empty. “My wife’s graduated as
well so I’m going to have lots of interesting
dinners at the house. I figure a few times
a week I will have various experts come.
I have this nice house that lends itself to great
discussions. But it feels too big most of the
time. I am only a small-sized person.”
Xanadu 2.0, the Gates home in Seattle,
covers 66,000sq ft and has 18 bathrooms,
a beach filled with sand from the Caribbean
and one of Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific
notebooks. The Gateses spent much of the
pandemic there with their children. Phoebe
even convinced him to post a TikTok video‘
H
Gates in 1985Gates with Warren Buffett
in 2015. Below: playing
tennis with Jeff Bezos, 2001PREVIOUS SPREAD: JOHN KEATLEY/REDUX/EYEVINE, GETTY IMAGES. THIS SPREAD: DEBORAH FEINGOLD/GETTY IMAGES, BILL GATES/FACEBOOK, GETTY IMAGES