Eat, Live, And Shop, And Become Londoners

Knightsbridge, Belgravia, and Chelsea. The rich from all over the world descend here to eat, live, and shop, and become londoners— some for a while, some for life.

- Hindol Sengupta

There are two ‘directs’ from Heathrow that count: a direct bus to Oxford, called the Oxford Tube; and a direct train, the Piccadilly line, to the Knightsbridge station, or Hyde Park Corner, if you prefer so. I was told this when I first went to London more than a decade ago, when I started, like many Indians, a summer ritual of moving base to London.

Later I realised that these ‘directs’ are metaphors, almost, for reaching the seats of the elite. Oxford University has produced 28 British prime ministers, including the current one, Boris Johnson. And Knightsbridge, along with Belgravia and Chelsea, is part of the trinity of neighbourhoods which form the capital of ‘Richlandia’ within London.

When I first started to spend a part of my summers there in a flat in Belgravia in a building whose name I will not reveal (I will tell you why later), I noticed that silence hung in the area dotted with embassies and expensive restaurants through the day, but vrooms of cars rang through the night. These were, I found out, superluxury and sports cars—some of which were gold- and platinumwrapped Ferraris—driven at top speed up and down the road that stretches from the upmarket department store Harvey Nichols to Sloane Square when it was empty at night.