Early Life and Career
Born Michael Denzil Portillo in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, Portillo took the name Xavier at confirmation. His father was an exiled Spanish republican, Luis Gabriel Portillo (1907–1993). His mother is Cora (née Blyth); her father was John Blyth, a prosperous linen mill owner from Kirkcaldy. An early brush with fame came in 1961 at the age of 8, when Portillo starred in a television advertisement for Ribena, a blackcurrant cordial drink. He was educated at Stanburn Primary School in Stanmore, Middlesex, and Harrow County School for Boys and then won a scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he came under the influence of Maurice Cowling.
Portillo graduated in 1975 with a first-class degree in history, and after a brief stint with Ocean Transport and Trading Co., a freight firm, he joined the Conservative Research Department in 1976. Following the Conservative victory in 1979 he became a government adviser. He left to work for Kerr-McGee Oil from 1981–1983 and fought his first, unsuccessful, election in the 1983 general election, in the Labour-held seat of Birmingham Perry Barr, losing against Jeff Rooker.
Portillo has been married to Carolyn Eadie since 1982.
Read more about this topic: Michael Portillo
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“Two sleepy people by dawn’s early light, and two much in love to say goodnight.”
—Frank Loesser (1910–1969)
“I have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes—learning how to close the door on it when ordinary life intervenes, how to close the door on ordinary life when it’s time to start writing again—that I’m not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now.”
—Anne Tyler (b. 1941)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)