Peter Miller

Please describe yourself and your areas of interest.

I was born in London in 1947 but spent most of my young life in Blackpool. There, for a period of about three years, I lived with my grandparents. My grandfather was what used to be called a commercial artist and in 1955 he was called out of retirement to repaint the ceiling of the Tower Ballroom after it had been gutted by fire. One year later he had completed The Carnival of Venice, over 4000 square feet, earning himself the sobriquet of ‘Michelangelo Miller’. In 1965, when I was 18, I came to then new University of York where after a modest engagement with History and English I obtained a summer job in Spelmans, my favourite bookshop in York. In fact I stayed and took it over in 1973, spending the next 44 years happily buying and selling second-hand and antiquarian books. I retired in 2012, handing it on to my business partner, Tony Fothergill. It is encouraging to find that Ruskin’s generous ideas about society and the environment have become more and more relevant and this has resulted in the Guild being more active and having a larger number of Companions today than it has ever had the past 150 years.

Why did you become a Companion of the Guild?

My interest in Ruskin was developed by Julian Spalding in the 1980s, who at that time was Director of the Sheffield Art Galleries and a Director of the Guild. The Ruskin Collection was back in Sheffield by then and Julian had arranged for it to be housed in Norfolk Street with Janet Barnes as its first Curator. At that time the Guild was much smaller than it is today, but Julian’s enthusiasm encouraged me to join and I became a Companion in 1988. I became a Director in 2002 and since 2012 I have been Director of Publications.