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An intrepid Scot, he has been called a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia, renowned for his work as a high-level diplomat and his enlightening travails across conflict regions in which he has lived humbly, wearing native dress among villagers.
So inspirational is the life story of Rory Stewart, an
Eton-educated former diplomat, that he is to become the subject of a Hollywood biopic starring the actor Orlando Bloom.
Stewart has earned an international reputation at the relatively tender age of 35 for his work in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans. He has taught Princes William and Harry, run a charity in Kabul, written three books and received an OBE.
After becoming disenchanted by the Allied invasion of Iraq, he left the British diplomatic corps to undertake a two-year 9600km journey on foot from Turkey to Bangladesh.
En route, he was held at gunpoint by Maoist guerrillas, beaten up by the Taleban and imprisoned several times - all of which helped him understand the way communities really live, he says.
The idea for the film came from Bloom after he heard a talk given by Mr Stewart on behalf of his Turquoise Mountain Foundation charity. The project could hail a new direction for Bloom into more politically conscious film-making, following his star billing in such blockbusters as Pirates of the Caribbean and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Last week, he announced he would co-produce and appear in a film about the siege of Sarajevo. Bloom hopes the film, based on the memoirs of American writer Bill Carter, Fools Rush In, would be made in Sarajevo itself.
Mr Stewart, who was born in Hong Kong and studied at Oxford University, was briefly an officer in the Black Watch before joining the Foreign Office, serving as the British representative to Montenegro from 1999 in the wake of the Kosovo campaign, then as the occupying coalition's deputy governor in Southern Iraq in 2003. He was aged just 30.
In Iraq, he grew bewildered by the out-of-touch advice on how to accomplish the rebuilding of a devastated society. His 2006 book The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq gives a bleak but humorous account of the bungled advice that he received.
He plans next year to move to America to take up an academic post as a professor of human rights at Harvard University.
The film will focus on three central "chapters" of his life: his epic journey on foot, his return to the Foreign Office and posting in Iraq, and his aid work in Kabul, which began two years ago as a solo operation.
- INDEPENDENT
