THE country has always been part of my life. We live in the Leicestershire countryside and my formative years were spent poking around in streams with my sister, jumping on our ponies with only a headcollar for guidance to race each other up the field, riding with my mother and acting as a human gundog to my father on his shoot days. I would stand by him on the peg, in my waxed jacket and cap, toes slowly turning to ice, scampering off to retrieve birds, proud as any well-honed gundog. There would always be a cherry bakewell in Pa’s pocket, for elevenses, and the warm glow of retelling the day when I arrived home with a brace of birds for supper. Storytelling has always been my thing.
This story is from the May 2021 edition of The Field.
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This story is from the May 2021 edition of The Field.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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Rory Stewart - The former Cabinet minister and hit podcast host talks to Alec Marsh about the parlous state of British politics, land management and his deep love of the countryside
The gently spoken 51-year-old former Conservative Cabinet minister is a countryman at heart. That's clear: he even changes into a tweed waistcoat for the interview, which takes place at his London home and begins with a question about his precise career status. Having resigned from the Commons and the Conservative Party in 2019, the former diplomat and soldier has reinvented himself, first with an unconventional but promising run as an independent for the London mayoralty (abandoned because of COVID19 in 2020) and then as a media figure, co-hosting one of the country's most popular podcasts, The Rest Is Politics, alongside Alastair Campbell, the former Labour spin doctor.
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