Every Spring since 1989, The Sunday Times has published a list of the 1,000 wealthiest people or families resident in the UK. It mirrors the American business magazine Forbes’ annual ranking of the world's billionaires, first compiled in 1987. Both rank people by their net wealth. Wealth in this context is usually defined as property in the form of ‘marketable assets’, meaning non- financial assets such as real estate, land, houses and tangible productive resources, and financial assets such as shares and bonds. Net wealth is calculated by totting up the value of this property, minus any debts or liabilities. Wealth does not include consumer durables such as cars, TVs and electronic goods. All wealth is property, but not all property is wealth. It is possible for someone to be fairly well- endowed with property in the form of consumer durables without possessing much, if anything, in the way of wealth.

The lists are most obviously striking for the way they highlight the extraordinary wealth of the richest members of society. But they also highlight the often dramatic and rapid shifts, upwards and downwards, in the net wealth of these elites: annual rises or falls of billions of pounds are commonplace. In the 2020 list, for example, published in May and reflecting the early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, £29 billion had been wiped off the wealth of the top 1,000 in the previous 12 months, with some suffering losses as high as £6 billion. On the other hand, between March and June 2020, the wealth of US billionaires was estimated to have increased by $565 billion, with Jeff Bezos leading the way, his wealth increasing by $36.2 billion during that period. By 2021, the Sunday Times was reporting increases in the wealth of nearly all of its top 20, in some cases by over £7 billion; and in 2022 it recorded huge increases in the wealth of its top two, the Hinduja brothers (whose wealth grew in value by over £11 billion) and Sir James Dyson (whose wealth grew by nearly £7 billion). At the same time, the 2022 list recorded wealth falls of between £1 billion and £3 billion for a number of the top 20. This raises some obvious questions.