The house at 2–8A Rutland Gate in Westminster last sold for a staggering £210m. Yet the only person who lives there resides on its porch, in a tent made mostly from umbrellas. For three years, Anders Fernstedt has lived in this makeshift home, while the house’s owners are mired in a financial controversy that means they cannot sell. It’s a stark and unsettling representation of inequality in England: a homeless man camped outside a 45-room mansion that stands empty behind him.
Even if the personnel have changed, the story sounds familiar – urban palaces bought often seemingly using dubiously obtained fortunes. “The sense that criminal money, tax evading money, money from politically exposed persons is wrapped up in the story of the city’s effort to provide a wonderful kind of party central for the world’s rich is an important one,” says Rowland Atkinson, a professor of urban studies at the University of Sheffield, and the author of the book Alpha City: How London Was Captured By the Super-rich.
In the Duke of Rutland’s day and then in the Victorian era, the reason the super-rich came to London was because the city was “a place of court as well as commerce”, says Atkinson. “That brought aristocrats looking to buy homes that were walkable to other people like themselves and walkable to the key centres of power. That kind of geography has subtly changed over time. With internationalisation, some of that’s about a dinner-party circuit, rather than being close to the king or queen.”
More picks on London
How Lena Dunham’s Cats Gave Her a Reality Check
“After moving to London, the writer’s growing posse of British felines took a walk on the wild side—and taught her a lesson in independence.”
The Pie and Mash Crisis: Can the Original Fast Food Be Saved?
“There used to be hundreds of pie and mash shops in London. Now there are barely more than 30. Can social media attention and a push for protected status ensure their survival?”
He Wants a New Start. So He Is Taking the Hardest Driving Test in the World.
“In a world of GPS and car-hailing apps, some Londoners still want to drive a traditional black cab. First, they must memorize thousands of city streets.”
What I Saw at the Movies
“I wasn’t a film critic or festival programmer or even an aspiring director. I was just an adolescent schoolboy and, in my parents’ probably loving description, a ‘weirdo.’”
‘The Ghosts Are Everywhere’: Can the British Museum Survive its Omni-Crisis?
“Beset by colonial controversy, difficult finances and the discovery of a thief on the inside, Britain’s No 1 museum is in deep trouble. Can it restore its reputation?”
A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld
“After Zac Brettler mysteriously plummeted into the Thames, his grieving parents discovered that he’d been posing as an oligarch’s son. Would the police help them solve the puzzle of his death?”
