My former partner and friend Matthew Higham, who has died aged 79, lived a cheerfully chequered life: running away from London to Scotland as a teenager to marry his pregnant first wife, Kay, when their parents forbade it; training as a blacksmith and at the E15 theatre school in London, alongside Mike Leigh; spending a brief stint in Berlin in an undisclosed role for MI6; selling knickers at Brixton market in London and learning to drive HGVs for British Rail.
Having driven trucks to various parts of the world, in 1978 he co-founded, with his brother Ben, St Giles European Transport, a specialist antiques haulage company in Norwich, and afterwards became an antiques dealer in the city.
Restless by nature, Matthew’s antique hunting gave him licence to roam across Europe, and later the US and China, finding worn and weathered treasures in remote places. Along the way he collected many experiences and stories, which he recounted with delight to anyone who would listen. Over the years he also accumulated two wives, two partners and five children.
Born in Holborn, central London, to David, a literary agent, and Helen (nee Witton), a journalist, Matthew grew up in Hampstead, north London. He attended various schools in the area, but none of them recognised his dyslexia, and he survived by becoming the class entertainer. Largely self-educated, in his teens he became politically aware, joined at least one Aldermaston march, and left the Sea Scouts to briefly hook up with the Communist Party of Great Britain.
After years of roving, in 1970 he settled in Norwich, where he set up his company with Ben, and where he lived in the heart of the city for most of the rest of his life.
Once his transport company ended in 1983, Matthew worked for Peter Howkins, an antiques dealer, running his large shop in Great Yarmouth. In 1992 he set up on his own and began to specialise in buying country furniture and artefacts, initially from the Czech Republic and France. He mostly sold what he found to people in the trade, but over the last 20 years he also operated from retail premises at Bayfield Hall in north Norfolk and the Post Room in Norwich.
Well versed as he was in the antiques trade, Matthew’s special skill was living life to the full. His energy was so strong that it drew people towards him, which was just as well, because his greatest passion was people – whom he observed, engaged with, entertained, argued with, cared about, flirted with, was kind to, and believed he always understood. Despite a tendency to loucheness, he had a deep sense of what was right, decent and good, without judgment or pomposity. He was always generous and welcoming to strangers, to anyone who was struggling in life, and to young people trying to find their place in the world.
Matthew is survived by his second wife, Adina Levay, their son, Felix, and his four other children: Mark from his early relationship with Kay, Oliver with his one-time partner Huguette, our son and daughter, Gabriel and Rose, and his brother, Ben.