A biography for Michael Portillohasn’t been written yet.
“People have said to me, 'Oh, you are much nicer making documentaries than you were in politics.' So I should be. If you are making a documentary, you are having fun. You are not under any pressure, normally.”
“I have never served on a jury because MPs were exempted - or banned, I think.”
“Were we ever to find ourselves living under a totalitarian regime, place no faith in the mercy of your fellow citizens.”
“I'm vain.”
“My grandfather was a great advocate of Scottish art at a time when Scottish artists struggled to be taken seriously. They were not highly regarded, but he fought for them, befriended them, and championed them.”
“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.'”
“I look back on my schooldays with a warm glow of nostalgia.”
“Sleep deprivation over quite a short period of time can make you paranoid.”
“The two biggest legacies of the Raj are the unification of India and the English language. Moreover, without the railways, India would not have been connected and could not have become one country.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I'm a man with a great political future behind me.”
“My Scottish grandfather, John W. Blyth, was a man addicted to paintings. A manufacturer of linen, he spent all his surplus money on pictures.”
“Television brings with it two dangerous hazards: the worship of celebrity and the blurring of reality and fantasy.”
“You never quite know what you do in life that leaves a seed behind that grows into an oak tree.”
“I am better at politics than I am at anything else.”
“People don't understand it, but the most intense occasions in the House of Commons were the ones I enjoyed most. When events could go either way and you could find yourself out of a job by the end of the day, those were the times when you were most on a high.”
“If the Tories and Lib Dems fought together, they'd keep their ministerial offices and limousines, and continue to do the right things for the U.K. But too many backbenchers in both parties yearn for Opposition, preferring hallucinogenic ideological purity and political irrelevance to the mucky reality of governing.”
“I don't mind being a bit of a showman.”
“I feel opera is an expression of artistic excellence. To do it is expensive, as there's a requirement for an orchestra, good voices, excellent sets, and the fact that productions generally have only short runs. But I believe it's something we ought to achieve as a nation.”