Florence of Belgravia: the Tory man of mystery
Dark horse in leadership race Rory Stewart tutored William and Harry and reasoned with the Taliban
APPEARING the picture of precociousness, it was the portrait that set Rory Stewart apart from his Eton peers.
With his blue-green eyes staring boldly out of the painting, the mere commissioning of the oil on canvas suggested that the 18-year-old was the one to watch among his early-nineties contemporaries.
He may have been an unfamiliar name to many until recent weeks, but his former college masters were so confident the star student would reach dizzy heights that celebrated artist Ursula Wieland-lambach was commissioned to paint him in 1992.
According to Philippa Martin, the Eton keeper of fine and decorative art, Mr Stewart was one of “a very small proportion of boys who had leaving portraits painted”. She told The Daily Telegraph: “Eton has a long tradition of ... leaving portraits dating back to 1754. For the first 100 years, two or three boys would be chosen every year but it has been far fewer in recent years and now it is relatively rare.”
So uncommon in fact that neither David Cameron nor Boris Johnson had individual portraits commissioned, although a painting of Mr Stewart’s prime ministerial rival – posing alongside his brothers Joe and Leo for their artist mother Charlotte Johnson – does hang on the college walls along with an oil on canvas of Princes William and Harry. (Mr Stewart would later go on to tutor the young princes while studying politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford’s Balliol College).
Once the dark horse in the race to replace Theresa May, the Hong Kongborn Persian speaker is now tipped as the most likely contender to make it into the final two with Mr Johnson.
He once denied he was a spy and has a CV that reads like Phileas Fogg’s diaries – but who exactly is the former Labour-supporting Tory MP described as the “odd man out” in the race for No10?
Born Roderick James Nugent Stewart on Jan 3 1973, the son of diplomat and D-day veteran Brian Stewart and his wife Sally Elizabeth Acland Nugent, his father was in the running to become director of MI6. Naturally, rumours circulated that he had followed his father’s footsteps into the intelligence services – although officially, he joined the Foreign Office as a graduate.
While denying at a hustings yesterday that he was ever a spy, he did little to discourage such speculation following his selection as the Conservative candidate for Penrith and The Border in 2009, telling The New Yorker that his career might have given “the appearance of such a path”. His alleged activities as a spook are thought to have centred around his work on East Timor independence from 1997 to 1999 and as the UK’S representative to Montenegro in the wake of the Kosovo campaign. Tellingly, he is in the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge – open only to those who have served in the special forces or intelligence services.
An impeccably-placed source told The Telegraph: “Rory was a fast-track entry after university and served without distinction for about seven years.”
Mr Stewart, 46, insists he “stopped working for the government proper” in 2000, when he went off grid by walking 6,000 miles across Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India (producing the first of three bestselling books in the process). Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he served as deputy governor of Maysan province.
His willingness to seek compromise with the Taliban did not win him many plaudits with the military in which he served as a second lieutenant (on probation) in his father’s Black Watch regiment during his 1991 gap year.
According to one source: “The Army boys nickna med him ‘Florence of Belgravia’ because of his propensity to want to compromise with the very terrorists who were killing British troops.”
An MP colleague disputes descriptions of nomadic Mr Stewart as “flaky”, “a fifth columnist” and “quixotic”, saying: “He’s a man who listens, wants to know what the problem is and how to fix it. There’s ambition there, but no ego. Yes, he’s quite romantic – but he’s a Tory to his very core.”
An interesting description for a teenage Labour Party member who never voted Tory except against his will in 2001, as his parents cast a proxy vote.
Having decried the “huge unfair advantage” of his education, he describes himself as “lower-upper-middle-class” and “extremely suspicious” of “establishments and bureaucracies and upper-class English people”.
It did not stop him teaming up with the Prince of Wales to found the Turquoise Mountain in 2006, an Afghan charity set on reviving traditional crafts. As Brad Pitt was buying the rights to his life story, with Orlando Bloom in the frame to play him, Mr Stewart met the love of his life, Shoshana Clark – at the time married to Prof Noah Coburn, who had volunteered to work on the Kabul project.
A mutual friend insists that their romantic relationship did not begin until she had separated from her husband.
By then Mr Stewart had moved to
‘He’s a man who listens, wants to know what the problem is and how to fix it. Yes, he’s quite romantic – but he’s a Tory to his very core’
Harvard’s Kennedy School to teach classes on human rights, returning two years later in 2010 to stand as an MP.
His election was not without contro- versy, outraging constituents by calling them “primitives who hold up their trousers with string”. He later insisted his quotes were taken out of context.
In 2012, he and American Ms Clark, 38, married at a chapel close to his parents’ home in Crieff, Perthshire, in front of just 12 guests.
Two years later he delivered his son Alexander on the bathroom floor after his wife went into labour unexpectedly (the couple had another child in 2017).
In 2015, he tried in vain to resuscitate his father after he fell ill at the age of 93. It brought to an end what was sometimes a difficult relationship. Mr Stewart Snr reportedly asked his son: “What on earth do you think you’re doing?’’ although he later conceded: “He’s much nicer than I am.”