Author of The Places in Between. Born in Hong Kong to a Scottish family, Stewart was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, before entering the Foreign Office.

He served in the British Embassy in Indonesia from 1997 to 1999, working on issues related to East Timor independence, and as the British Representative to Montenegro in the wake of the Kosovo campaign. From 2000 to 2002 he walked across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey of 6000 miles, during which time he stayed in five hundred different village houses. After the coalition invasion of Iraq, he was appointed the Coalition Provisional Authority Deputy Governor of Maysan and Senior Advisor in Dhi Qar, two provinces in southern Iraq.

He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his service in Iraq at the age of 31, and the Ryan Family Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and the Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Rory原籍蘇格蘭, 今年纔三十三歲. 他曾經當過兵, 做過英國的外交人員. 三年前, 他自己走到伊拉剋去“找工作”, 結果被任命為一省之長, 管理一個與伊郎交界, 有855,000人口的極端落後的省. 他甚至不會阿拉伯文.

在他過往的外交使命中, 他曾經參與過西方國傢對印尼, 剛果, 阿富汗等地的“重建”. 他說, 以他的經驗, 當地的百姓都是歡迎這些西方的“乾涉”的, 因為原來的政權太腐敗黑暗. 然而, 在伊拉剋, 他隻感受到敵意和對抗, 絕大部分民眾都視美英的聯盟為侵略者.