Tim Wilson moved into 19-25 Tolmers Square in 1974 at the invitation of Vince Hetreed, whom he had known at Oxford.

From 1974 to 1976 Tim was doing the MPhil course in “Combined Historical Studies (the Renaissance)” at the Warburg Institute in Woburn Square, Bloomsbury. Building on his experience in writing the local history of Tolmers Village in Nick Wates’s The Battle for Tolmers Square, he then did the MA course in Museum Studies (English Local History) at the University of Leicester (1976-7). He moved out of Tolmers Square in late 1977 after taking up a post of Research Assistant at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

For part of the period he lived in Tolmers Square with Christine Burden (later Hall), who later had a distinguished career as a librarian at the British Library.

In 1980 he moved to become Assistant Keeper (Renaissance Collections) at the British Museum, since when he has mainly specialized in the study of European Renaissance decorative arts, especially Italian maiolica.

In 1990 he took up the post of Keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, becoming a Professorial Fellow of Balliol College, and in due course Professor of the Arts of the Renaissance. He retired in 2017 but continues to research, organize exhibitions, and write about Renaissance pottery.

Although his membership of the Labour Party was a brief episode, Tim has continued to be involved in development/conservation/planning politics, including spells as a Trustee of the Oxford Preservation Trust and of the Oxford Civic Society. For some years he was chair of a (tragically failed) campaign to restore the former canal basin in the centre of Oxford.

He is married to Jane (née Lott), who had been involved with another ground-breaking “alternative” project in London, Vauxhall City Farm, which still flourishes. They have three children, Alastair, Julia, and David.

While living in Tolmers Square, in a bid for the moral high ground, Tim sent money in lieu of rates to Camden Council. The outcome of this was that in 1979 he was arrested for non-payment of rates on the whole building. He narrowly escaped, on the grounds of inadequate notice of proceedings having been given, a career-destroying conviction.