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
adult change life overseas possibilities purposeful question sort
I don't know much about Britain. I've been working overseas for most of my adult life. So I'd like to see what sort of problems there really are here. It's a question of asking, 'Where are we going, how purposeful are we?' And see if there's anything that can be done to find possibilities for change.
everybody life neither nor sure
If we say the purpose of life is our children, that's neither a purpose nor a meaning. But I'm sure I will be as besotted as everybody else when I have them.
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.
children home watch
I have planted over 6,000 trees at home in Scotland, some of them oak. I'd like my children to be able to watch them grow.
governs met remote
I have not met, in Afghanistan, in even the most remote community, anybody who does not want a say in who governs them. Most remote community, I have never met a villager who does not want a vote.
changed knowledge rapidly sufficient
The world isn't one way or another. Things can be changed very, very rapidly by someone with sufficient confidence, sufficient knowledge and sufficient authority.
differ interests learn ourselves position scotland society
The thing that interests me most about Scotland is how we differ from our neighbours. How do our ambitions differ? What kind of society are we? What can we learn from the mistakes of the past, and how do we position ourselves in the world?
bothered kid local million people room run sure took village
I have a constituency with 52,000 people and a million sheep. I was in one village where a local kid was run over by a tractor. They took him to Carlisle, but they couldn't be bothered to wait at the hospital. So they put him in a darkened room for two weeks, then said he was fine. But I'm not so sure he was.
accent across historical inches whatever
I found that Scottishness and Englishness are actually strong, instinctive things, whatever the historical reasons. Even the accent changes - just two inches across the border.
bit tory
It was a bit of a surprise when I became a Tory MP. My friends said it was a stupid idea.
fixing stuff
I did stuff for three years in Kabul that I found exciting, and a lot of that was fixing roofs, talking about sewage installation.
bit
Being a backbench MP is a bit of an anti-climax for a superhero.
good walked
I'm not good at explaining why I walked across Afghanistan.
family love
I want to 'normalise' myself. I would love to have a family.