In 2025, more than 8,000 Americans applied to live and work in the U.K. Like generations of expats before them, many installed themselves in the North London neighborhood of St. John’s Wood, where leafy streets, spacious villas, and Lord’s Cricket Ground offer well-to-do Yanks a flattering dose of English life.
George Lucas recently bought a $54 million home here, not far from the posh campus of the American School in London, which enrolls around 1,400 students at fees upward of $60,000 per year. The private lives of the area’s well-known residents—Paul McCartney, Ewan McGregor, Kate Moss—unfold quietly behind greenery and gates. But the insularity can be both a blessing and a curse; it is not exactly the convivial, pub-centric existence that London is known for.
