An Evening with Michael Portillo: A Life of Two Halves

Michael Portillo is coming to the Harrogate Convention Centre on Wednesday 4 November, as part of Harrogate Theatre's Evenings With series. It's a talk he's calling A Life of Two Halves, and it does a fair job of summing up the two very different paths he's taken.

For the first half, there's the political career. He served as Secretary of State under Margaret Thatcher and ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party, before losing his seat in one of the most famous moments in British political history. Since then, he's reinvented himself as one of the nation's favourite broadcasters, sparring with Diane Abbott and Andrew O'Neill and documenting the world's greatest railways.

But the evening goes further back than his time in the Commons. He draws on his father's experience of the Spanish Civil War and his escape to England, and the story of how Michael and his mother met while looking after refugee children. He also talks about his own recent adventures across Spain, the USA, India and beyond, so there's a bit of family history and a bit of travel in the mix.

It sits within the Evenings With series run by Harrogate Theatre, which brings actors, writers and showbiz legends to the stage to talk about everything from literature and live television to comedy and cricket. This one is in the Main Auditorium at the Convention Centre on Kings Road, HG1 5LA.