Travelling the railways of Europe with a century-old guidebook can be disconcerting: fares, food, and drink seem shockingly expensive compared with what they were; trains and paddle-steamers run to unexpected timetables (assuming they're still running at all); and not only states but whole empires have been wiped from the map.

Michael Portillo

It's not as if I've ever been to prison or been close to going to prison. The closest I've got is knowing people who have been in jail - after all, I was a member of Parliament - and visiting them there during their sentence.

Michael Portillo

Men Wing Win

I have Spanish ancestry and, indeed, speak the language, up to a point.

Michael Portillo

Age Up Try

You never quite know what you do in life that leaves a seed behind that grows into an oak tree.

Michael Portillo

Life You Tree

Music turns the world upside down.

Michael Portillo

Music World Us

What's extraordinary about Cobra Mist, and so much of what went on at Orford, was that the public were completely oblivious to it.

Michael Portillo

Were Us T

Travelling the railways of Europe with a century-old guidebook can be disconcerting: fares, food, and drink seem shockingly expensive compared with what they were; trains and paddle-steamers run to unexpected timetables (assuming they're still running at all); and not only states but whole empires have been wiped from the map.

Michael Portillo

Travel Time Food

Personal responsibility matters.

Michael Portillo

T Son Responsibility

I do rather rejoice when people come up to talk to me about railways.

Michael Portillo

Ways Way Up

I look back on my schooldays with a warm glow of nostalgia.

Michael Portillo

War Wit Warm

Three letters send a chill down the spine of the enemy: SAS. Those letters spell out one clear message. Don't mess with Britain!

Michael Portillo

Age Wit Three

I don't think I've got a thick skin, but I've not felt particularly humiliated by the things which people think I would have felt humiliated by, such as losing my seat in 1997 and not being elected leader in 2001. In the second case, I felt relieved.

Michael Portillo

Art Would Which

My favourite British line is the West Highland line. It was built across moorland where no one had succeeded in building a road. So everything in that area is there because of the railway line.

Michael Portillo

Where West Way

People are obviously very interested in travel, including travel in Britain.

Michael Portillo

Travel Very Us

No restaurant, however brilliantly situated, can give you the constantly changing views that you can see from a railway. Revolving restaurants at the tops of tall buildings try to compete, but spinning around is no substitute for speeding along.

Michael Portillo

Pet You Way

My Scottish grandfather, John W. Blyth, was a man addicted to paintings. A manufacturer of linen, he spent all his surplus money on pictures.

Michael Portillo

Money Us Tis

My grandfather, who was always keen to promote living artists, staged an unprecedented exhibition of Peploe's works at Kirkcaldy in 1928.

Michael Portillo

Work Art Age

I love a good meal on a train, and if I'm travelling on a discount ticket, the challenge is to eat more than the price of the fare.

Michael Portillo

Travel Love Good

For all those who experienced it, the Spanish Civil War was devastating.

Michael Portillo

War Experience Who

The advantage of trains over planes is that there is much less hassle. You can get up from your seat and stroll about; you're more likely to meet people, and, particularly if you're making a long journey, you can actually see the terrain.

Michael Portillo

Art Age Your

My eyes are at different levels, and my right ear's a bit bigger than my left - which showed up particularly in school photographs - so my mother used to call me her 'little Picasso.'

Michael Portillo

Art Yes Which

As a presenter, you have to speak with artificial energy and enthusiasm.

Michael Portillo

British-built railways in India helped the British to make money and maintain order; but, as a by-product, they served to unite the country, making it ripe for independence.

Michael Portillo

There's much about the British Raj which I think is disreputable. It was rapacious; it was a sort of kleptocracy, and it was also racist. Indians were not treated as equals.

Michael Portillo

Non-fictionalised accounts of horrific accidents, bereavement, and the outrages of officialdom tend to move us deeply.

Michael Portillo

Like so many other grammar schools that flourished in Britain before they were abolished through a mix of ideology and political folly, Harrow County was a fiercely competitive institution, where all boys were taught to strive for excellence. It was precisely because of this demanding regime that results were so good.

Michael Portillo

The stakes are high in politics.

Michael Portillo

One of the reasons that Thatcher promoted home ownership is that it promoted responsible citizens with a stake in society. But another reason was that those people would tend to be Conservative.

Michael Portillo

Here in Britain, we can get a little bit snobby about American history. Yes, their history is not quite as long as ours. But it isn't all that short, either.

Michael Portillo

I hope I succeed in demonstrating that you may equally find compelling and significant narratives - stories that alter or add to our understanding of history - in unprepossessing places: a Victorian sewer system; a Cold War bunker; derelict hospitals.

Michael Portillo

Few people have heard of John Hawkshaw, the engineer responsible for Brighton's sewers, but he also built the Severn Tunnel and parts of the London Underground system. Such figures, largely forgotten now, conceived an infrastructure that was perfect in its fine detail and intended to last for a century or more - as it has.

Michael Portillo

For someone like me, making a documentary - I don't kid myself. There's no influence at all. What I do is entertainment. I would even say much the same about the column I write in 'The Sunday Times.'

Michael Portillo

The truth is a good thing.

Michael Portillo

British-built railways in India helped the British to make money and maintain order and, as a by-product, served to unite the country, ripe for independence.

Michael Portillo

Oppositions usually say ridiculous things and must embarrassingly then ditch untenable positions.

Michael Portillo

Some people are born to trains, and some have trains thrust upon them. Fortunately, I can be included in this latter category.

Michael Portillo

Of all the places I've visited in my life, Egypt has been the most fascinating. I've explored almost the whole country: Cairo and the Pyramids, Alexandria, the temples of Luxor and Karnak, the Valleys of the Kings and the Queens and the Nobles.

Michael Portillo

America, to me, is this enormous contrast between the heady idealism of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, who said, 'All men are created equal,' and the reality that he was himself a slave owner.

Michael Portillo

Ask anyone where they were when they heard of Diana's death, and they won't hesitate, because nobody can forget. Along with 9/11, it remains the most poleaxeing public event, news so shocking it made me shake, and drove everything else from my mind for days.

Michael Portillo

I'm nothing to do with the Conservative Party; I'm not a member of the Conservative Party. I stopped being a member shortly after I stopped being a member of Parliament and I took up a career as a broadcaster.

Michael Portillo

If you are a fan of my BBC series 'Great Continental Railway Journeys,' you'll probably not be surprised to learn that one of my great aspirations is to travel on Egypt's railways.

Michael Portillo

The true symbolism of every facet of 'Guernica' can only be guessed at, but we do know that it haunted Picasso.

Michael Portillo

I don't mind being a bit of a showman.

Michael Portillo

The late 1960s was another time and another world.

Michael Portillo

Before my teens, my contemporaries were reading Tolkien and were absorbed by his works, but try as I might, I could not be drawn in, perhaps as something in me resists the epic, medieval-feeling fantasy.

Michael Portillo

Television brings with it two dangerous hazards: the worship of celebrity and the blurring of reality and fantasy.

Michael Portillo

We in Britain do not have the same capabilities as the United States, but we are members of the United Nations Security Council. And we take our obligations and duties deriving from that very seriously.

Michael Portillo

As a politician, I spent a lot of time in Washington and New York, cities that are familiar to Europeans.

Michael Portillo

If, like me, you're interested in history, Egypt is a place of wonders. It's the land of many civilisations, including Greek, Roman, Christian, and Muslim.

Michael Portillo

I have liked trains since I was a boy, although I was never a train-spotter.

Michael Portillo

It's a dilemma for every modern parent - how to keep children safe on social media without monitoring their every post.

Michael Portillo