Best long reads of 2021: The rich vs the very, very rich: the Wentworth golf club rebellion

The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the first instalment of our series looking back at the best audio long reads of 2021, editor David Wolf introduces one of the long read team’s favourite pieces of the year. When a Chinese billionaire bought one of Britain’s most prestigious golf clubs in 2015, dentists and estate agents were confronted with the unsentimental force of globalised capital. By Samanth Subramanian. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Guardian.
0:30.0	Hi, my name is David Wolth and I'm the editor of the Guardian Longread. For the last few
0:48.7	podcasts of the year, we wanted to highlight a few of our favourite pieces of 2021.
0:54.1	First up, we have a wonderfully entertaining piece by Samant Subramanian. The rich first
0:58.6	is the very, very rich. Welcome to the Guardian Longread, showcasing the best long-form journalism
1:05.2	covering culture, politics and new thinking. For the text version of this and all our
1:09.4	longreads, go to thegardian.com forward slash longread.
1:14.5	The rich versus the very, very rich. The Wemtworth Golf Club Rebellion. By Samant Subramanian,
1:22.5	read by Caroline Wilde and produced by Esther O. Poku Jenny. Like all exiles, Michael
1:30.0	Fleming remembers when his separation from home soil began. 20th October 2015, a Tuesday.
1:38.7	That year, Fleming was captain of Wemtworth, an old prestigious golf club in North West
1:43.6	Surrey. The club had recently been bought by a Chinese firm, Rainwood Consulting Limited,
1:50.2	and an annual general meeting was scheduled for the 20th. On that morning, having already
1:55.0	drafted his speech, Fleming was in his dentistry clinic when he received the email.
2:00.5	Brace for change went worth wrote to Fleming and his colleagues, outlining its planned
2:05.2	announcements at the AGM, a wild increase in membership fees, and the number of members
2:10.6	drained from about 4,000 to just a few hundred.
2:14.2	A Barme decision, Michael Parkinson, the chat show host and a long time member had told
2:19.8	the mail on Sunday, which had scooped the details two days earlier. Peter Alice, the BBC
2:25.3	Golf commentator, complained that Rainwood was bringing an Asian philosophy to Britain.
2:31.5	Fleming, whose manner is so mild as hard to ever imagine him yelling for, was shocked.
2:38.0	He began rewriting his speech. The AGM that evening was standing
	...

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