Rory Stewart
Rory Stewart
Roderick James Nugent 'Rory' Stewart, OBE, FRSLis a British academic, author, diplomat, documentary maker and Conservative politician currently serving as a Minister of State at the Department for International Development. He is a former Chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. Since May 2010, he has been the Member of Parliament for Penrith and The Border, in the county of Cumbria, North West England...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth3 January 1973
asia notions romantic
I had a lot of romantic notions about what it would mean to cross Asia by foot.
british decent embassy main people single
In the British embassy in Afghanistan in 2008, an embassy of 350 people, there were only three people who could speak Dari, the main language of Afghanistan, at a decent level. And there was not a single Pashto speaker.
democracy dignity equality government individual matters reflects
Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality and an idea of liberty. It reflects an idea of dignity, the dignity of the individual, the idea that each individual should have an equal vote, an equal say, in the formation of their government.
bankers nobody power truth
The politicians think the journalists have power, the journalists think bankers have power, bankers think lawyers have power. The truth is, nobody has power.
active allow engagement informed local needs public
For politicians to be honest, the public needs to allow them to be honest, and the media, which mediates between the politicians and the public, needs to allow those politicians to be honest. If local democracy is to flourish, it is about the active and informed engagement of every citizen.
doctorate somebody
When you're doing mountain rescue, you don't take a doctorate in mountain rescue; you look for somebody who knows the terrain. It's about context.
history organic romantic
In some sense, I'm a romantic. I like the idea of organic history and tradition.
I am from Scotland, and I am Christian, not Muslim.
easily longing result saddam tyrants
Nostalgia for dead tyrants and the longing for heroes are unhealthy, and they can result in the deification of a Saddam as easily as a Havel or Mandela.
coming frank life maybe odd people public quite seem
I think one of the odd things about public life, coming from the outside, is that people seem to be paranoid. Maybe they were quite frank initially, but then they did one thing which went wrong.
afghans assume based best country envies everybody people strange sympathy towards
As a Scot, I instinctively feel a sympathy towards a culture which is based on generosity. It's very refreshing. Afghans think they're the best people in the world and their country is the best place in the world, and it's strange because you go there and it doesn't really look like it, and yet they assume that everybody else envies them.
politics unspoken ways
Politics feels, on what I have seen of it, like joining a tribe, and a lot of it is about unspoken ways of behaving.
bamboo hiking posted sandwiches
When my father was posted to Malaysia, we'd take bacon-and-egg sandwiches in our backpacks and go hiking in the jungle or make bamboo rafts to sail down rivers.
afghans al north people states united
The Taliban, broadly speaking, are Afghans - farmers, subsistence farmers. As I say, most of those people can't find the United States on the map. Al Qaeda, traditionally, are much more educated, middle-class people, often from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, North Africa.