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.