TV review: Some uncomfortable home truths for Portillo on his trip through Irish history

Former Tory defence secretary Portillo learns about Home Rule, while Andrew Neil’s GB News proves to be an odd concoction straight from Bunker Britain

Michael Portillo and historian Michael Laffan at the King’s Hall in Belfast during filming of Partition, 1921

Partition, 1921 (RTÉ One)

GB News (Sky)

Michael Portillo was standing outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton. He had, he said, been elected to Westminster in the by-election following the murder of Sir Anthony Berry MP, one of the victims of an IRA bomb hidden in the hotel and detonated during the Tory Party conference in 1984.

The bomb, clearly aimed at assassinating then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, must have shaken Portillo to the ...