Michael Portillo is a speaker who these days is best known for 13 series of Great British Railway Journeys. Also, 7 series of the continental journeys on BBC2. For many years he appeared weekly on BBC1’s late-night sardonic review of politics, This Week with Andrew Neil. In addition, he was a regular panellist on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze. He now presents a programme on GBN called Sunday with Michael Portillo.
Michael Portillo was a Conservative MP for the best part of twenty years. He held three positions in the cabinet, including Secretary of State for Defence.
Early days:
Michael was born in North London in 1953. His father, Luis, had come to Britain as a refugee at the end of the Spanish Civil War. His mother Cora, was brought up in Fife. She met Luis while she was an undergraduate at Oxford. Michael attended grammar school in Harrow County. He then went to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he gained a first class degree in History.
Cambridge finished in 1975, and for a year Michael worked for a shipping company. He moved to the Conservative Research Department in 1976, where he spent three years. At the General Election in 1979 he was responsible for briefing Margaret Thatcher before her press conferences. For the next two years he was special adviser to the Secretary of State for Energy. He worked for Kerr McGee Oil (UK) Ltd from 1981 – 1983. He contested the Birmingham Perry Bar seat at the 1983 Election.
In 1982 Michael and Carolyn married. They had first met when they were at school. Carolyn had become a chartered accountant and for a number of years was a ‘headhunter’ with Spencer Stuart Associates.
Politics:
Michael returned to politics as a special adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Nigel Lawson). In December 1984 he won the by-election in Enfield Southgate. This had been caused by the murder of Sir Anthony Berry MP in the Brighton bombing. Michael represented the seat for thirteen years but was defeated in the 1997 Election.
He joined the Government in 1986, and remained a member until 1997. Michael was a whip, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Social Security, Minister of State for Transport, Minister of State for Local Government and Inner Cities and as a Cabinet Minister was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for Employment, and Secretary of State for Defence. in 1992 Michael was admitted to the Privy Council .
Television:
After his 1997 electoral defeat, Michael Portillo returned to Kerr McGee as an adviser. Michael also turned to journalism. He wrote about walking as a pilgrim on the Santiago Way, and working as a hospital porter. Michael had a weekly column in The Scotsman. He had a three part series for Channel 4 about politics Portillo’s Progress. There was also a programme in BBC2’s Great Railway Journeys series, which was partly a biography of his late father, and radio programmes on Wagner and the Spanish Civil War.
Michael was re-elected to Parliament in a by-election in Kensington and Chelsea in November 1999. He was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer February 2000 – September 2001. Following the Conservatives election defeat in 2001, Michael unsuccessfully contested the leadership of the party. In 2005 Michael left the House of Commons.
He has made a number of television programmes for BBC2. These include, Art that shook the world: Richard Wagner’s Ring, Portillo in Euroland and Elizabeth I in the series Great Britons. There was also When Michael Portillo became a single mum. Others were, Portillo Goes Wild in Spain (a natural history programme) and The Science of Killing (for Horizon). There followed documentaries on the unburied bodies from the Spanish Civil War and on Guantanamo Bay. In 2010 BBC Radio 4 carried his 3-part series “Democracy on Trial”.
For BBC4 he has made several series of Dinner with Portillo. This was a discussion programme. In 2008 he made The Lady’s not for Spurning (about Margaret Thatcher’s legacy).
Since 2006 Michael has been on The Moral Maze team on BBC Radio 4. In 2003 he began the weekly political discussion programme This Week on BBC1. Michael’s fellow presenters were Andrew Neil and Diane Abbott MP. He has made countless programmes in the series Great British Railway Journeys and Great Continental Railway Journeys for BBC2. For six years he was a weekly columnist on The Sunday Times. He was also the theatre critic of The New Statesman between 2004 and 2006.
In 2008 he chaired the judges of the Man Booker prize, in 2011 he chaired the Art Fund Prize and in 2012 he chaired the committee recommending grants for endowment to arts and heritage institutions under the government’s Catalyst programme.
Michael was a member of the International Commission on Missing Persons in the former Yugoslavia from 1998 to 2012. He sat on the Board of BAE Systems plc from 2002 to 2006. Also, Kerr McGee Corporation during 2006. Michael is President of DebRA. This is the national charity working on behalf of people with the genetic skin blistering condition, Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB). He was British chairman of the British-Spanish Tertulias (an annual high level conference) 2004-2008.
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