The son of theatre director and polymath Jonathan Miller, on moving back to the London street where he grew up
Ten years ago, William Miller, a former TV producer turned entrepreneur, bought a house in Gloucester Crescent, in Camden, north London. On the surface of it, there was nothing unusual about this, even if the house in question, formerly in the ownership of Ursula Vaughan-Williams, the widow of the composer, was eye-poppingly expensive (a similar property would now cost in the region of £3m at least). With its high ceilings and burnished stone staircases, who wouldn’t have fallen in love with it? For Miller, however, this wasn’t an uncomplicated move, psychologically speaking. He had spent his whole life trying to get away from Gloucester Crescent, it having been the street where he grew up. More to the point, his parents were still in situ, just two doors down. To hear their voices, loud and resonant as car alarms, he had only to stand for a few moments in his cloistered new garden.
From the vantage point of a plump sofa in his almost outlandishly tasteful home, Miller briefly contemplates his perversity in this matter. Even now, it seems to amaze him. “There was a terrible moment when I bought this house,” he announces. “Do you ever have dreams where you’re back at school? It was like that. I’d worked so hard to be independent, to get away from the scrutiny of my father. Then I woke up one day, and thought: ‘Jesus, he’s there, and he can hear me, and I can hear him.’ It was like 25 years of effort had gone out of the window in a moment of folly.”
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