Rory Stewart: Who is the outsider rising through the Tory ranks in the race to be PM?

Rory Stewart will likely have a taxi waiting for him outside the Palace of Westminster when the results of the latest Tory MPs ballot are announced Tuesday night.

It will be ready to take him home to his wife, Shoshana, and his two young children, after he is dumped from the Tory leadership race following a spirited but ultimately unrealistic campaign to become the next prime minister. It would be an outcome that most observers expected when the contest begun last month, and one that many still think is the most likely conclusion.

But there will be another address programmed into the driver's sat nav: that of a BBC studio not far from Westminster, where, if all goes to plan for Stewart, he man will rush after the announcement. There, he will go head-to-head with Boris Johnson, the man who has spent weeks attacking, in a televised debate between the remaining candidates, and the tantalising prospect of a run-off between the two men to become the next prime minister will be rapidly increased.

It would be a remarkable outcome, given the newly-appointed international development secretary was only a household name in his own home when the leadership contest kicked off last month, and was widely expected to be one of the first to be eliminated.

No longer. An unconventional campaign combined with a straight-talking, honest approach and a strong stance against a no-deal Brexit have seen him catapulted into the spotlight and sent bookies scrambling to slash the odds of him becoming Britain's next prime minister (he is now the second favourite).

While Tory MPs think he has become their best hope of stopping Boris Johnson bumbling his way into Downing Street, Stewart has a mountain to climb if he is to increase his number of votes from the 18 he received in last week's vote to the 33 needed to progress beyond the latest round.

It would be far from the most arduous journey he has made. But who is Rory Stewart, the man who has taken the Conservative leadership contest by storm?

In a typically frank response to a question about weaknesses, Stewart told a televised hustings on Sunday that one of his biggest flaws was his privileged upbringing. He was born in 1973, the son of a British diplomatic stationed in south-east Asia. He grew up in Malaysia and then in Scotland and was educated at Eton and Oxford, where he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics. While at university, he served as a private tutor to Prince William and Prince Harry.

What came next is a matter of some dispute. The official version of events is that Stewart joined the Foreign Office and was stationed in Indonesia at the time of the conflict over independence for East Timor, and then in Montenegro after the intervention in neighbouring Kosovo.

Other reports suggest that he was, in fact, a spy. His father was a senior figure in the intelligence services and, so the story goes, a young Rory was recruited soon after leaving university and served as an intelligence officer for seven years.

The MP denied this when asked by journalists at a hustings on Monday, as he would be legally obliged to do if he had indeed been a secret agent. But, pushed on the issue on Tuesday, told the BBC cryptically: "I definitely would say I served my country and if somebody asked me whether I am a spy I would say no."

There is more clarity about what he did next. In 2000, when he claims to have stopped working for the government, he walked 6,000 miles across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Nepal and India - a journey that become the basis of three widely-acclaimed books.

Stewart returned to the Middle East after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, becoming deputy governor of the Maysan province in southern Iraq.

After a short stint teaching at Harvard University, in 2005 he helped establish the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, an NGO working in Afghanistan in the wake of the US-led invasion of the country.

Brad Pitt was so interested in Mr Stewart's story at this point that he bought the rights to make a film about his life. The Hollywood star reportedly lost interested when Stewart became a Tory MP, winning the seat of Penrith in the 2010 election.

After entering parliament, he was quickly tipped as a future prime minister, but his political career got off to a slow start. He spent six years on the backbenches before being appointed to a series of ministerial roles, including prisons minister, where he raised eyebrows by vowing to resign if the state of UK prisons had not improved within a year.

Stewart finally got his break last month, when was promoted to the cabinet last month as international development secretary in a reshuffle following the sacking of Gavin Williamson as defence secretary. It was, in part, a reward for his loyalty and his staunch defence of May's Brexit deal - a stance he has maintained during the leadership contest.

His appointment was largely ignored, however, and few outside Westminster would ever heard of him.

That changed when Theresa May announced her resignation. Within days, Stewart had announced he was standing to replace her as prime minister, and kicked off a walking tour of Britain that saw him talking to voters while filming the conversations on a phone.

Initially seen as an entertaining but largely irrelevant outsider, his candidacy quickly gathered momentum. He won plaudits for his performance in the Channel 4 hustings on Sunday, and subsequently won some impressive endorsements, including that of David Lidington, the deputy prime minister. May herself is even rumoured to have voted for him.

In an interview last year, Stewart admitted it would "difficult" for him to become prime minister. For all the coverage his campaign has received, that has not changed. His support among Conservative MPs is growing but remains fragile, and his standing among the Tories’ Eurosceptic membership is low.

Still, the unlikely candidate running the most unconventional of campaigns has already achieved the unexpected. Few would bet against him progressing to the next round, and the odds of him reaching the final two have rapidly diminished. Whatever happens next, Stewart is the clear winner of the contest so far. Many in Westminster are now asking: just how far can he go?