Marylou Baines, an arbitrageur, is an American woman who climbs the ladder through aggressive techniques. After Jake’s death, she tries to cover up her involvement. Later she runs for president. In the fast-paced world of high finance, Directors Charlie McGuire and James Allen’s rendition of “Serious Money” offers an indelible mark on the audience with its sharp wit and unapologetic critique of capitalism. First performed in 1987, Caryl Churchill’s play revolves around the ruthless pursuit of wealth and power in the financial world. The plot focuses on a hostile corporate takeover and moral bankruptcy, following the death of Jake, ( Annie Rainbow) inherent in the cutthroat culture of high finance. Virginia Water, Surrey: a prime location for multimillion-pound homes. Photograph: Greg Balfour Evans/Alamy

She’s right, they do. It’s a feature of the Grosvenor Estate, apparently, some kind of floral requirement. It’s one of the decorative touches that help normalise a strange legacy of the distant past. It’s now politically acceptable to feel a sense of outrage at Russians or billionaires from other nations, who took advantage of a corrupt state to gain their wealth. But of aristocrats whose forebears did something similar with land, only hundreds of years ago, we’re still in social awe. The word ‘plutocracy’ comes from the Greek words for money and rule, and Knowles has shown how complex the relationship between wealth and power is through closely observing the frailties of the human condition. Serious Money ends with a rallying cry for ending the rule of the super-rich, and this is the perfect way to close such an accessible piece of sociology. For academic audiences, however, I hope that this is not the last piece of work that Knowles will do on the super-rich. Her observations and conclusions have the potential to engage with unresolved questions in the sub-field of ‘elite studies’ —such as ‘ are the wealthy hypermobile transnationals or still rooted to nation states?’ and ‘ are plutocrats a distinct class or something different?’ In any case, Serious Money is an innovative and disturbingly entertaining travelogue covering one of the most important issues of our time. Professor Caroline Knowleshas been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship to conduct a three-year investigation into the city’s Serious Money and the people who make and spend it. The plot ends with Greville Todd in jail, Corman appointed as a Lord, and Scilla happily working for Marylou Banes. Additionally, Knowles could have built upon Veblen’s less famous theory of ‘conspicuous leisure’ when looking at the wealthy’s use of paid domestic service. Serious Money is littered with references to ‘servants’, but they are given the most focus in the chapter where Knowles talks to ‘Butler’, a loyal household manager for Middle-Eastern royals for the previous seventeen years. Though he is subordinate to his employers, he is still a manager and quite patronising towards those working below him: ‘The first thing you do, you get on the right side of the Filipinos […] They’re very nice people. They’re very hardworking […] If they go against you, they’re going to make your life hell’ (187-88).

Wordle Helper

Serious Money is an academic sociological study, but you would be forgiven for not realising this at first glance. It opens with a ‘cast of characters’: a list of Knowles’s interviewees with pseudonyms like ‘Blazer’ and ‘Sturgeon’ to reflect their idiosyncrasies. After this, the reader sees an illustrated map befitting a fantasy novel, with ‘Caroline’s route’ from London’s financial district, through Mayfair and Kensington, and all the way out to suburban Surrey. Then, we are treated to 20 chapters of novelistic prose filled with rich ethnographic observations. Knowles occasionally pauses to cite fellow academics, though only to strengthen her argument with similar observations. The more sociologists who write in this style, the better the discipline can engage audiences outside of its bubble. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? The play suggests that humans are overall predictable when determining how bad behavior (i.e., greed) can be created in a competitive environment. An attempt at a company takeover in the second part of the play emphasizes this notion. It is not as simple as greedy people wanting money to survive or even to live a luxurious life. What drives the nefarious characters in the play is the desire to attain power and to be the alpha hunter, and more money and power are the prey. They are addicted to the feeling of godliness because they are such an integral part of the global economy. A city,” she writes in conclusion, “without reciprocity, collective life and neighbourhood interaction, in which everything is bought and paid for, is a bleak prospect – and an unsustainable one.” There’s been something going on since the 90s which has drawn people from other countries to London,” says Knowles, who notes that 49% of property sales in central London in 2020 were to overseas buyers. According to Forbes magazine, London now has the fourth most billionaires of any city in the world. It has consequently developed what Knowles calls “a whole ecosystem” for dealing with wealth: hedge funds, private equity firms, and what are known as family offices – a one-stop shop, as it were, for wealth management, with everything from daily expenses to investments being overseen by a dedicated team. Much of this ecosystem is based just north of the Wolseley, in and around Mayfair, which boasts the highest density of private equity firms in the world.

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The play has fared better at American regional companies, such as the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California. A successful revival was given at the U.K.'s Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 2009. Scilla Todd, a dealer in London’s futures exchange, is intent on making her way in a man’s world. Initially determined to bring Jake’s murderer to justice, she abandons this mission and succumbs to the very moral decay that killed him. As so many struggle to survive the cost of living crisis, billionaires enjoy a hoard of wealth which grew more during COVID-19 than the previous fourteen years combined. Caroline Knowles’s Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London could not have been published at a more critical time.