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Middleland
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  • Published: 30 November 2025
  • ISBN: 9781787336247
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $60.00

Middleland

Dispatches from the Borders

Formats & editions
Hardback
30 Nov 2025
EBook
30 Oct 2025
Audiobook
30 Oct 2025
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The new book from the #1 Sunday Times-bestselling author and co-host of hit podcast The Rest Is Politics

From the author of the Sunday Times no. 1 bestseller Politics on the Edge and co-host of The Rest is Politics

Rory Stewart spent nearly a decade as MP for Britain’s most rural constituency, Penrith and the Border. As he came to know and love this part of Cumbria, he found inspiration in the beauty of its landscape, its rugged history as a frontierland, and in the spirit of its people.

Drawing on pieces originally written for a local newspaper, Middleland is an urgent and inspiring portrait of rural Britain today – a place caught in tensions between farming and the natural world, between the need to preserve and to grow, between local and national politics – as well as a timeless evocation of the history, people and landscape of Cumbria.

These are stories of beauty and ingenuity, which also show us what a better politics might look like.
  • Published: 30 November 2025
  • ISBN: 9781787336247
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $60.00

About the author

Rory Stewart

Rory Stewart OBE was born in Hong Kong in 1973. He is the author of four books, including bestsellers The Places in Between, which describes the last section of his 6,000 mile walk across Afghanistan, and The Marches, about a walk with his father in the borderlands between Scotland and England. His books have sold over half a million copies, been translated into multiple languages, and been awarded several prizes including the Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Literature. From 2010-2019 he was the Member of Parliament for Penrith and The Border. During his career as a politician he served in several ministerial roles, including as Secretary of State for International Development in 2019. He has been awarded the Order of the British Empire (for his work in Iraq), the Gold Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (for his work in Afghanistan), a Scottish BAFTA (for the documentaries he has made and presented with the BBC) and honorary doctorates from Stirling University and the American University of Paris. He tweets at @RoryStewartUK.
portrait photo of Rory Stewart

Also by Rory Stewart

Politics On the Edge
The Marches
See all

Praise for Middleland

Rory Stewart has written a remarkable book about community and countryside, his community, his countryside. It is both telling and tender. He is treading in the footsteps of Thomas Hardy and Edward Thomas in his understanding of our need to belong and to contribute. A rare and life-affirming story of searching and finding our place to be and to cherish.

Michael Morpurgo

Urgent and inspiring, Middleland is at once a hymn to the beauty of the Cumbrian landscape, a testament to the spirit of its people, and a powerful argument for political reform. Deeply rooted in history and the land, personal, wise and often funny, this is a heartfelt celebration of local people and place, and an invitation to imagine a different kind of politics.

Caroline Lucas

A moving, grounded look at rural Britain

i

[A] fascinating and honest collection of daily anecdotes and stories of everyday folk, and of how the best intentions often end up on stony ground due to the realities of national politics

UK Press Syndication

Stewart was not your usual politician, and these eloquent articles… skilfully edited into a very readable diary, range widely across the constituency…. A serendipitous treat… [An] enjoyable book

Telegraph

Stewart sees Cumbria's glory... [his] writing on all these subjects combines erudition, a fine turn of phrase... disarming admissions of fallibility and a certain amount of backing into the limelight.

New Statesman

A thoughtful love letter to his former constituency... He writes with a wonderful familiarity of the region... refreshingly honest

Country Life

Full of intelligence and panache

Scotsman

[Stewart is] a compelling writer… [Middleland is] an intimate chronicle which should prove important for Cumbrians in the future and their political representatives

Cumbria Life

A triumph... [His columns] are very good indeed. His accounts of Cumbria as a sort of lost land are stark pieces of reportage... To read Middleland is to understand that rural England and those who make it ought to be protected... We are left with a distinct feeling that this country would be a better place if all MPs loved their constituencies as Rory Stewart clearly loved his.

Literary Review

Middleland is the latest instalment in the ongoing Rory Stewart project, which asks: what is my country, and what can I do for it?... His writing is limpid, reflective, often beautiful.

The New World

Middleland is at once a hymn to the beauty of the Cumbrian landscape, a testament to the spirit of its people, and a powerful argument for political reform

Caroline Lucas, Byline Times

A thought-provoking rural MP’s view of Cumbria

Country Life, *Books of the Year*