Orlando Bloom to make a star of Rory

Rory Stewart, the 35-year-old British author who is sometimes billed as a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia, is to have a Hollywood film made about his life. The man behind the movie is Orlando Bloom, who has already cast himself in the Stewart role, and who got the idea for the biopic after attending a lecture given by the adventurer earlier this year.

No one can deny Stewart’s life to date has been eventful. An Oxford graduate and former diplomat, he has earned an international reputation for his work in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans. He has taught Princes William and Harry (like them, he is an Old Etonian), run a charity in Kabul, written three books and is holder of an OBE. He ended his Foreign Office career (he was an officer in the Black Watch before that) after becoming disenchanted with the Allied invasion of Iraq, the subject of his 2006 book The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq. He then undertook a two-year journey on foot across 6,000 miles from Turkey to Bangladesh. En route, he was held at gunpoint by Maoist guerrillas, beaten up by the Taliban and imprisoned several times.

The lecture Bloom attended was on behalf of Stewart's Turquoise Mountain Foundation charity, which began two years ago as a one-man operation and now employs 350 people. The charity was conceived by Prince Charles, who personally enlisted Stewart's help. ·