Preserve what we cherish: Rory Stewart in Cumbria

04 December 2025, The Tablet

In Politics on the Edge, Stewart revealed the dysfunctions of the House of Commons. Middleland shows his everyday life in his constituency – rescuing sheep from floods, visiting schools, campaigning for farming subsidies,

Middleland is a collection of articles Rory Stewart wrote for a local paper around a decade ago, amidst his busy life as MP for Penrith and The Border. Some were written in the bath, “trusting to a combination of cooling water and terror at dropping the computer” to keep him awake. Together, they compose a theory of democracy, an elegy for the countryside as a working landscape of small family farms, and a manifesto for the importance of local geography and history for representing a place.

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