Mrs Wilhelmina Stirling lives in Old Battersea House in Wandsworth, which she has transformed into a museum of Pre-Raphaelite art so extensive that a tour typically takes five hours. Her manservant Mr Peters shows a tour party round, illuminating the darker corners with a portable lamp.

Mrs Stirling is happy to answer questions from the tour party. Asked if the place is haunted, she says a friend of hers was convinced that the chairs were all occupied by ghosts, one wearing a rapier that might imperil anyone who sat down on it. Mrs Stirling has never seen a ghost herself, but she sleeps in a bed formerly owned by the notorious Lord Rochester, and she was once woke up by a loud sneeze.

The collection stems from her love of paintings and her late husband Colonel Stirling's passion for furniture and old china. The collection fills the entire house, and focuses on the later Pre-Raphaelite period. She has a highly personal relationship with most of the works: either she knew the artist or was present at the time of its creation. She shows a painting of the Archangel Ithuriel, and says that the real-life toad who modelled for an allegorical image of the devil was actually very pleasant company and frequently paid them visits.

The main link between Mrs Stirling and the Pre-Raphaelite movement is that her sister was the prolific painter Evelyn De Morgan, who produced hundreds if not thousands of canvases. Her husband, William De Morgan, was an inventor, ceramicist and friend of the great Victorian designer William Morris. He devoted much of his time and money to rediscovering the lost art of lustre glaze on pottery, though he finally achieved success late in life in a different field entirely: as an accidental best-selling writer.

Mrs Stirling reminisces about her sister's painting, which started when she was a small child. She had to paste putty around the cracks of her nursery door so that the smell wouldn't escape, as she had been banned from painting, and later resorted to smuggling water in a doll's teacup. Both Evelyn and William De Morgan cared little for what happened to their work: the act of its creation was satisfaction enough.

The Pre-Raphaelites weren't just idealistic aesthetes: their work spanned sculpture, furniture, architecture, design, fabrics, painting and pottery. Much of it was a reaction against the industrialisation of England, and their work is full of images of menace and treachery.

Mrs Stirling is confident that their ideals will return, as she detests modern art and things that people will yearn for the return of beauty. She cites the surprise success of a sale of an Edward Burne-Jones painting as evidence that the tide is turning. But she doesn't obsessively dwell on the past: she has published 36 books, and has finished another, 'Ghosts Vivisected'. Even at 96, she remains as tireless as her Pre-Raphaelite forebears.