Rory Stewart

Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border, former British diplomat and adviser to the Obama administration on Afghanistan

Rory Stewart was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Malaysia. He served briefly as an officer in the British Army, studied history and philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford and then joined the British Diplomatic Service. He worked in the British Embassy in Indonesia and, in the wake of the Kosovo campaign, as the British Representative in Montenegro.

In 2000, he took two years off and began walking from Turkey to Bangladesh. He covered 6,000 miles on foot alone across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal — a journey described in The Places in Between (2004), which won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and was nominated for the Guardian first book award.

In 2003, he became the coalition Deputy Governor of Maysan and Dhi Qar — two provinces in the Marsh Arab region of Southern Iraq. His experience and his understanding of the Middle East prompted the Obama administration to consult him on their policy in Afghanistan.

In 2004, Stewart was awarded the Order of the British Empire and became a Fellow of the Carr Centre at Harvard University. He is the founder and Chief Executive of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which he set up to begin regenerating the historic commercial centre of Kabul, and to reintroduce the teaching of traditional Afghan crafts, which have been in sharp decline in recent years. At one point, the foundation was responsible for employing every male of working age in Kabul's Old City.

In 2009, he was selected through an open primary as the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party for Penrith and the Border, becoming MP for the constituency at the 2010 general election.