from The Sunday Telegraph 29th October 2006

Lectures, poetry readings, stand-up rows... Martin Miller's Notting Hill salon is the last word in intellectual chic, says Damian Thompson

A former language school in Notting Hill has been turned, almost overnight, into a cross between a Proustian salon and Sherlock Holmes's study.

'Over a thousand people were queuing up for lectures. And I thought: that's what people are into now'

Inside, standing next to a table adorned with a skull, a middle-aged lady is delivering a lecture to an audience lounging on Ottoman cushions. She is a retired haematologist, and she has just been talking about evolution and genetics. But now, her voice dripping with relish, she is comparing Tony Blair to Hitler.

Her bien pensant listeners pretend to be shocked. But, in fact, they are thrilled. This is what they came to hear.

For the retired doctor is Margaret Cook, spurned wife of the late Robin Cook and a lady of firm opinions. Her comparison of Blair and Hitler implies a moral equivalence between the invasion of Iraq and the Holocaust. A member of the audience protests that the Prime Minister has yet to engage in ethnic cleansing. 'Give him time,' she replies.

Dr Cook is one of the first speakers at Miller's Academy of Arts and Science, a set of rooms crammed with gothic artefacts where, among the flickering shadows thrown by the candelabra, members can enjoy lectures, debates and dramatic performances. Half-way through her description of Hitler and Blair as 'messianic Alpha males', Dr Cook leans forward and says confidingly: 'My publishers wouldn't let me put that in my last book.' Now there's a surprise.

The academy is the latest wheeze of Martin Miller, the jovial, self-educated author of Britain's most authoritative antique guides.

It is situated above a branch of Starbucks; on the other side of Westbourne Grove is Miller's Hotel, a rooming house which looks as if the entire contents of Portobello market have been poured into it. Miller's old friend Marianne Faithfull is a frequent guest; Kate Moss often drops in. Miller plans to entice both women to his new academy.

'I had the idea after visiting a books festival and noticing that over a thousand people were queuing up for lectures,' he says. 'And I thought: that's what people are into now.'

Perhaps because television commissioning editors are so reluctant to address serious subjects, a huge middle-class appetite for learning has built up. 'Look at the success of the Intelligence Squared public debates in London,' says Miller. 'I went to a secondary modern, so there are all sorts of things I don't know about. Now is my chance. Learning is trendy.'

For decades, Miller has had a genius for grabbing the zeitgeist and squeezing it for all it is worth - usually quite a lot of money, in his case.

In the early Seventies, he was a photographer, 'specialising in dolly birds,' he says. 'When decimalisation came in I took this naked girl and covered her in pennies on Brighton beach.' In the early Nineties, he wrote The Essex Girl Joke Book. In between came two divorces, a country house hotel and the first guide to the prices of antiques.

	Miller has a genius for grabbing the zeitgeist

'The trade didn't like that, because they wanted to keep people in the dark about the real value of things,' he says gleefully.

Miller is sprawled on an over-stuffed sofa in the first-floor drawing-room of the academy, underneath a vast portrait of Beethoven, with whom he shares a wild grey hairstyle. The walls are painted a dusty Neapolitan yellow, a sensible choice of colour, since Miller himself smokes enough cigarettes to stain an entire ceiling.

The academy, it is fair to say, is not aimed at Essex girls. The regular poetry nights will feature poems submitted by members online; Andrew Motion will help select the best.

Speakers in the first fortnight have included the Tudor historian Alison Weir and the raffish foreign correspondent Charles Glass. Forthcoming lectures include Tristram Stuart on 'The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India', a Notting Hill subject if ever there was one.

The events are unlikely to be too high-minded since members can help themselves to as much free booze as they want. 'If someone gets plastered, it's not the end of the world,' says Miller. (Supermarkets on both sides of the Atlantic sell his own-brand Miller's Gin.) The quota of 500 founder members, who pay £115 a year and will have their photographs displayed on the staircase, is almost filled; after that will come a waiting list and the price goes up to £170.

Miller and his Romanian wife have just bought Glencot House, a Victorian mansion in Wookey Hole, Somerset, and are planning to open an annexe there.

The proprietor gazes happily at the academy's hastily assembled mixture of Georgian portraits, Chinese vases, chaises longues, stuffed animals and a grand piano.

'It's full,' he says, 'but not full enough. I must get some weapons. We need swords!' His biggest regret is that he had to turn down a crucified cow that Damien Hirst didn't want. 'I mean, where would we put it?' He sucks on his cigarette while his eyes dart around the room. 'I suppose we could turn it into a coffee table…'