Bookbenchers: Rory Stewart MP

This week’s bookbencher is Rory Stewart, the Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border. Stewart also has written a book review for this week’s issue of the Spectator: on Andrew Alexander’s dramatic reappraisal of American foreign policy since 1945, America and the Imperialism of Ignorance.

1) Which book’s on your bedside table at the moment?

Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes

2) Which book would you read to your children?

Rosemary Sutcliff’s Frontier Wolf

3) Which literary character would you most like to be?

G K Chesterton’s Father Brown

4) Which book do you think best sums up ‘now’?

Trollope’s The Way We Live Now

5) What was the last novel you read?

Bruce Chatwin’s On the Black Hill

6) Which book would you most recommend?

Tolstoy’s Haji Murad

7) Given enough time, which book would you like to study deeply?

The Koran

8) Which books do you plan to read next?

Charles Nicoll’s Leonardo