Penance completed, Stewart embarked on a ministerial career that provides the main course in this feast of political insight. Rarely before has the life of a government minister been described in such granular detail or with such literary flair. A few weeks later, at a Conservative Party event I was approached by a close aid of a wealthy Russian, Evgeny Lebedev. She said he would like me to come to stay for the weekend at his castle in Italy. A celebrity was coming who had made her name modelling topless in the Sun.

Once he gained ministerial preferment, Stewart rose fast – four departments, six ministerial portfolios in less than four years. Come on Rory, I can write it myself already. Do you want me to give you some clues? Point one, connect young people with nature; point two, apprenticeships; point three, health and well-being… Make it eight points, if you can’t find 10. But ten is better.” And again she smiled, as though she were testing me.An eye-opening (and highly enjoyable) read for anyone interested in understanding the realities of political power in the age of populism Yuval Noah Harari, author of SAPIENS The book is in all fact an entertaining, insightful, timely, refreshingly honest romp through the British political swamp, offering up a tantalisingly clear view of the author’s unnerving time as a British MP. When the results came in, I had won a record majority. We increased the vote across Cumbria and indeed across the country. Our Lib Dem coalition partners were wiped out, dropping from 57 seats to eight. Labour lost every seat in Scotland to the Scottish Nationalists – ending a century of domination in the north. The old two-and-a-half-party system seemed to be over. How much of this was due to Jim Messina and his digital campaign, and how much to the promise of a Brexit referendum, was unclear. Each MP attributed our success to our own ability, charisma and dedication to our seat. But political scientists insisted that it had been a national swing and the character of the individual MP made very little difference to the vote. This fine, perceptive book shows just how much British politics needs someone like Rory Stewart: incisive, thoughtful, far more concerned with the business of good government than with the small-time idiocies of party politics. And how typical that he should have been driven out of government, and out of politics altogether John Simpson I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t feel like what I mean by power. I felt far more powerful running a small NGO in Kabul.’

This political memoir is sui generis. Even the title betrays the contradictions of the work: Stewart is at once "on the edge" and "within". Rory Stewart has always made a virtue of his vulnerable transparency. He once asked a Financial Times profiler "do you think I should be prime minister?", and, while he is often consciously self-mythologising, he never recites false myth. Where, for example, Boris Johnson slaves to belie his true self, Rory Stewart slaves to announce his (or at least, his own conception of it). This makes the book utterly revealing and at times unsettling, and there are two narratives which both reveal and unsettle within.The Vanishing Middle 21. Secretary of State 22. Leadership 23. Standing Up 24. Pinocchio 25. Pro-rogue 26. Quaestor