The collector.(Philip Hewat-Jaboor)(Interview)

As he was tracking down the materials for an exhibition on the great Regency collector and decorator Thomas Hope, Philip Hewat-Jaboor was also creating his own magical surrounds in the form of a library buried in a steep bank in the garden of his house on Jersey. This extraordinary structure demonstrates Hewat-Jaboor's passion for the rich and strange from all epochs. But where had all this started?

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"With my uncle, Sir William Ackroyd," Hewat-Jaboor explains. "He was an interesting and intriguing collector, and I very much grew up at his feet at his Georgian house in Dorset, which was full of fascinating and charming works of art."

After public school, Hewat-Jaboor was planning to study hotel management in Lausanne but a chance telephone call from Peter C. Wilson, the legendary chairman of Sotheby's and an old friend of his mother and uncle, changed all that. "He rang my mother and said Sotheby's were doing these new works of art courses--this was in 1972 and he would like it if I would come and do them for a year. I was very lucky because we were tutored by Derek Shrub, a wonderful teacher for using the eye and the ear for understanding works of art. Then Sotheby's offered me a job."

Five years at Sotheby's Belgravia followed, after which Hewat-Jaboor left to go and work with a Dutch banker who was, he says, "more interested in buying art for investment. In the end I decided I didn't believe in buying art for investment, but the job had served its purpose because it introduced me to a much larger art world."

It was at this point that Hewat-Jaboor set up on his own as an art adviser. "It was a ...