michael portillo

The Right Honourable Michael Portillo is a former Conservative MP who changed his career to become one of the nation’s favourite TV travel show presenters. Portillo entered the House of Commons in 1984 and was a minister for over a decade, holding three cabinet positions including Secretary of State for Defence. Since leaving politics he has worked on countless documentaries including eight series of the immensely popular Great British Railway Journeys for BBC2, and he also appears regularly on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze and BBC1’s This Week.

Born in Hertfordshire, Portillo made an early television appearance as a child in a Ribena advert. He first rose to prominence as a politician when he was elected to represent Enfield Southgate in 1984. In a major political upset, he lost his seat in the Labour landslide of 1997, but returned in 1997 winning the seat of Kensington and Chelsea and going on to become Deputy Leader and Shadow Chancellor before retiring from politics to pursue a career in the media in 2005.

Surprisingly for some, his transition from politician to well-loved travel show host was seamless, his passion for steam trains leading him to present Great British Railway Journeys, and four similarly-epic follow up series: Great American Railroad Journeys, Great Indian Railway Journeys, Great Alaskan and Canadian Railroad Journeys and Great Australian Railway Journeys, and has written several best-selling books based on the series. In 2018 he presented Portillo’s Hidden History of Britain for Channel 5, and he returned to his political roots to present a documentary series about the current crisis in the Conservative party, The Trouble with The Tories in 2019.

Portillo was Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons and is currently President of DEBRA, a British charity that helps those with skin condition epidermolysis bullosa.