Michael Portillo
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
Michael Portillo

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

Michael Portillo
Michael Portillo

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
Michael Portillo

Music turns the world upside down.

Michael Portillo
Michael Portillo

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

Michael Portillo
Michael Portillo

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

Michael Portillo
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
Michael Portillo

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
Michael Portillo

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

Michael Portillo
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
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
Michael Portillo

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

Michael Portillo
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
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
Michael Portillo

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
Michael Portillo

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
Michael Portillo

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

Michael Portillo
Michael Portillo

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

Michael Portillo
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
Michael Portillo

The truth is a good thing.