MICHAEL PORTILLO
Political commentator and broadcaster
...are you reading now?
THE Astaires: Fred & Adele by Kathleen Riley. Kathleen is an Australian classicist with a forthcoming book on modern equivalents of the Odyssey, focusing particularly on a man’s nostalgic and epic quest for his father. She features my ‘search’ for my papa, Luis.
One of my first television programmes was about Luis’ experiences in the Spanish Civil War, during which he fought on the Republican side. Five brothers bore arms for the opponents, led by General Franco.
But, in this book, the versatile Kathleen has written about the period before Fred Astaire became a movie star, when he and his elder sister, Adele, took theatre audiences by storm on both sides of the Atlantic.
Adele was courted by the Prince of Wales (later, briefly, Edward VIII), escorted by Winston Churchill and married to the Duke of Devonshire’s son. And, boy, could she dance!
...would you take to a desert island?
DON Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes in English and Spanish. To my shame, I have never completed what is reputed to be the first modern novel. By a bizarre coincidence, Shakespeare and Cervantes are believed to have shuffled off this mortal coil on the same day: April 23, 1616.
I have Spanish ancestry and, indeed, speak the language, up to a point. On a desert island, I would, at last, have no excuse for not completing the book.
My father loved it, praised it and wrote about it. A wood carving of Quixote on his nag Rocinante graced my childhood home.
With a dual Spanish/English text, I would also surely vastly improve my Spanish, because Cervantes was a virtuoso with the language (as was my father): maybe as much as Shakespeare was with his.
...gave you the reading bug?
KENNETH GRAHAME’S The Wind In The Willows. It was probably the first substantial book I read for myself. Unusually, I went on to read Grahame’s much less known other books, which proves I had caught the bug.
Before that, my mother, Cora, read Dickens novels to me: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations.
The animal characters of The Wind In The Willows delight any child: the industrious water rat, the boorish egomaniac Mr Toad (pictured), the villainous weasels. I have only recently discovered that Grahame was a reactionary fulminating against the reforms of the pre-World War I Liberal government, with Toad in his motor car representing the encroachment on the traditional countryside of the brash nouveau riche! I was a Tory in embryo, it seems.
...left you cold?
THE Lord Of The Rings series by J. R. R. Tolkien. 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.
I have never returned to it, and I have felt the same lack of enthusiasm for Harry Potter. And, true to form, I watched one series of the Tolkien-like Game Of Thrones and gave it up.
But then, how to explain that I love the epic, medieval-feeling fantasy opera with a similar name to Tolkien’s work: Richard Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle? The music must have something to do with it.
PorTillo’S Hidden History of Britain by Michael Portillo is published by Michael o’Mara at £20