By the late 1990s Phillips was an establishment figure in most aspects of the arts. He became a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, an Honorary Fellow of the London Institute, an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and a Trustee of the British Museum. He celebrated his fiftieth birthday by playing a game of cricket with many of his friends at the Kennington Oval cricket ground. In 1995, he married the writer Fiona Maddocks, Music Critic of "The Observer".