Appropriately for a man whose name is synonymous with antiques, Martin Miller sleeps in a room named after an 18th-century English poet, surrounded by favourite pieces of old furniture and porcelain. His attitude towards these collectables is casual. 'Antiques are household fittings as far as I'm concerned.' He says. 'They have to take their chance. I don't mind my objects d'art and bric-a-brac suffering a bit of wear and tear. If something gets damaged or broken, then so be it.'

His interest in antiques began soon after he left school, when he was earning his living as a freelance photographer. 'I was photographing textiles for an antiques dealer,' he explains, 'when her husband walked in with a bentwood rocking chair. Although it was a bit battered I liked its look. We all got talking about age and restoration and things like that and I eventually left at about 3am.'

With his interest roused, Martin looked for a guide to prices and found that no such thing existed. Spotting an obvious hole in the market, he decided to get one together himself and, with business partner Tony Curtis, devised the first Lyle Antiques Review. 'We wanted a familiar name with authority,' he recollects, 'so we started to play around with well-known names. We thought of National Gallery, Tate Gallery, Tate & Lyle the sugar merchant, dropped the Tate and kept the Lyle,' It was 1969 and the forerunner of the famous Miller's Antiques Price Guide was born.

This period know-how would stand him in good stead when, after splitting from wife Judith, he at last decided to move from the family-sized Gothic mansion they used to share in Kensington to his present Victorian masionette in London's Notting Hill three years ago. 'It was an absolute wreck when I bought it,' he remembers of the extensive suite of rooms accessed by a discreet doorway off one of London's most fashionable streets. 'The top floor was completely uninhabitable. That and the next floor down had been divided into bedsits. I had to take them down to turn it into a home and I still haven't had time to put back the cornices. I must get around to doing that one day.'

The three-storey apartment isn't listed, so Martin had a free hand to put it together again. In 18 months he replaced the roof, re-wired, completely re-plumbed and installed a strictly functional little kitchen where, a self-confessed night-owl and bon viveur with a penchant for eating out in local restaurants, he sometimes knocks up late-night snacks for himself and his friends.

The 40ft-long drawing room is the centrepiece of the Miller home. Reached by the original Victorian stair, with its graceful wrought-iron rail via a narrow inner hallway, it's an extravagantly theatrical space crammed with books, pictures, candlesticks, clocks, small tables, sofas, stools and chairs. Upholstered in rich red velvets and brocades, it looks luxurious, but not everything is expensive. 'It's not what you've got, but how you put it together,' Martin observes. 'It's the overall impression that counts.' The abundant window treatments prove his point. The voile cost only 1 a metre, but there's so much of it and the swags and tails fall into such graceful folds, they wouldn't look out of place in a sumptuous palace.

Martin has decorated the eight en-suite bedrooms on the two upper floors with equal flair. 'I've named them after English romantic poets.' he explains. 'Each room has an appropriate verse by the poet on the door and the furniture reflects his life.' Martin's bedroom, which is dedicated to William Blake, features a terrestrial globe, and the Keats room, with its crimson hangings, reflects the poet's intensely romantic nature. The Byron, on the other hand, is hung with landscapes of Venice, where the poet famously swam the Grand Canal, while the Wordsworth bedroom contains a French boudoir table commemorating his revolutionary days as a young man in France.

Somehow it all hangs together, although there was never any master decorating plan. 'I've just thrown everything together,' Martin insists. 'I had most of the stuff in store - some for nearly 20 years. I used to be a buyer, but I'm beyond buying now. I haven't got that sort of money - I'm more of a dedicated browser.'

Martin thinks of his retreat as an experience to be shared. He's never had a problem with privacy. He loved playing host at Chilston Park - the 17th-century timbered hotel in Kent which he and Judith used to run toghether. 'Privacy is an alien concept to me,' he explains. 'I'm ultra-gregarious. I don't like being alone and I'm addicted to meeting people. That's why I keep open house now by letting rooms.'

Martin's unstuffy attitude to antiques and people has stood him in good stead. On one occasion he returned home in the small hours to discover a couple sound asleep on the sofa. And he's often found his bedroom occupied. 'When this happens I beat a cordial retreat and beg a bed for the night from a friend or neighbour,' he confesses. 'I like people who enjoy the experience of living in the past and there's no way I'd spoil it for them.'
 
Despite his socialbility and passion for the poetic past, Martin can't stop the present from beginning right outside his anonymous panelled front door, flanked by conventional bay trees in Georgian tubs. He is unperturbed: 'What's important is creating the right atmosphere in here,' he insists. 'I love living in the past and so do a surprising number of people. I've got one chap who enjoys staying here so much, that he keeps coming back again and again - and he only lives a mile down the road!'

Read more about Martin at http://www.martinmiller.co.uk