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Acknowledgements

This book represents the culmination of my interest in and research on London over the last quarter of a century, work that has included studies of the city’s middle classes, gentrification, gated communities and, latterly, its wealthiest residents. Some of this work has been conducted by myself, much of it with colleagues and friends. A good portion of the research presented here was supported by two public grants from the Economic and Social Research Council for work on the research projects The Very Affluent Worker and Alpha Territoriality in London and Hong Kong, whose teams included my long-term co-lead Roger Burrows alongside the excellent support of researchers David Rhodes, Hang Kei Ho and Luna Glucksberg, as well as Richard Webber, Tim Butler, Caroline Knowles and Mike Savage. I am particularly grateful to Richard Webber, who acted as a reliable pathfinder, statistically and literally, on forays into the alpha territory – a term he coined to describe urban elite areas and which was the inspiration for the title of this book. I have also been helped in framing and appreciating the spaces that appear in this book through a photographic project with Alan Silvester, whose work is also featured here.

I am deeply grateful for the conversations with and general support of all those who have spurred and challenged my work, in particular Andrew Baker, Andrew Bebbington, Sarah Blandy, Talja Blokland, Sam Burgum, Stephen Graham, Katie Higgins, Keith Jacobs, Loretta Lees, Rex McKenzie, Simon Marvin, Tim May, Anna Minton, Emma Morales, Simon Parker, Dennis Rodgers, Phil Stanworth, Malcom Tait and Paul Watt, and especially to Emma Brown for her support throughout. The invisible, invaluable and patient efforts of my editor at Verso, Leo Hollis, are gratefully acknowledged.