Rory Stewart On TV

Rory Stewart OBE who was a candidate at the Bracknell Conservative Primary (See how he preformed my review here) and is now the Conservative PPC for Penrith and the border is on television tonight.

Rory Stewart if he wins (he should do Penrith is a very safe conservative seat) will be a useful addition to any government. you only need to read his CV on Wikipedia to know that. I’m not sure how good he would be as a constituency MP given his history but if he gets in I will be watching with interest to see how he gets on in Government. He certainly has an interesting way of campaigning which does bold well for his possible future constituency, see Iain Dales blog A Walk With Rory the Tory.

He is on BBC 2 Tonight (Saturday 16th January) in a two part program called the Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia. To quote David Butcher a reviewer on the Radio Times;

“As a former soldier, diplomat, travel writer and governor of an Iraqi province, Rory Stewart is just the kind of dashing character to offer a personal take on the life of TE Lawrence, something he does superbly in this two-parter. Stewart's angle is that the lessons Lawrence learnt about the Arab world, desert warfare and insurgency are painfully relevant today. In fact, as he points out, today's US Army officers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are encouraged to read Lawrence's writings as well as counter-insurgency manuals influenced by his ideas. Whether they bother is another matter. Stewart walks us through Lawrence's early years as a historian and archaeologist and traces how a shy, romantic young student became first a spy and then, in World War One, a guerrilla general, leading an army of Bedouin rebels against the Turkish Ottomans who at the time ruled Arabia. It's a stirring story, and blessedly free of reconstructions, though the odd clip from David Lean's classic film doesn't hurt.“

Now I think you can see just what an insightful program this will be into the problems in this part of the world and perhaps into the interesting mind of Rory Stewart.