Caroline Knowles is an academic and writer, exploring unusual but important issues. For example, in this episode of Ratio Talks she reflects on lessons from her book Serious Money based on a walk through, as she puts it, plutocratic London, talking to people who have more money than most of us can imagine. This isn’t a book that equates great fortune with joy. Severe and multiple advantage, as I call it, turns out to be about as much fun as severe and multiple disadvantage.

In the podcast, I ask Caroline if some of the downside of disadvantage -shame, backing away from society, social isolation- apply to those who live a life of abundance. What marks the two groups apart is the impact on the places they live. One of Caroline’s academic collaborators drew the map below representing the distribution of English ‘high net work individuals’ -those with more than a million dollars of disposable income. As I say in the podcast, these people literally screw up the map of the country. Caroline has followed up this themes with a new book, Uneasy Streets, which shows how Chinese money is reshaping urban life in Britain. Serious Money was published by Allen Lane. The diagram is from Roger Burrow’s article (with colleagues) Welcome to Pikettyville?: Mapping London's Alpha Territories, Sociological Review, 2016.

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