Catherine Anderson seems to have lived three or four lives already.

She has packed an awful lot into her 43 years – and there's still much to do.

“ I suppose so.. . it is just the way I am, I just like to work. I would love to be idle but if I sit down and watch Netflix I start feeling guilty,” she says on a rare quiet day.

“ We all now assume that our lives are going to be numerous careers. That seems to be the way my generation is going. You gi e two or three jobs in or maybe more.

“ Charitable work for me is something I will do until I'm dead. It is something you can do at any time at any age which is why it is so great. And in the end it makes us feel good about ourselves.”

Her life has been filled with travel, good deeds, politics and devastating tragedy.

She's here to tell the Cumberland News about the documentary We Were Kings which explains what has become of the old ruling family of Burma – now known as Myanmar.

There's a special fundraising screening at Rheged next month with all money going to to the Angus McDonald Trust, a charity set up by Catherine in memory of her fiance.

Angus died of pancreatic cancer in her arms at Yangon airport in 2013. He was just 50.

An acclaimed Australian photo-journalist, Catherine admits she didn't like him much when they first met in the mountains of India.

But eight years later they got engaged. A year later, he was diagnosed with cancer and 11 months later he died.

Catherine established the charity to help the people and a place the couple had shared a deep affection for.

It began as a trust in and is now a registered charity that runs clinics in the slums of Yangon (formerly Rangoon), treating TB and HIV patients and offering vocational training to get them back into work.

It also support s around 50 children who were born with HIV or contracted it through dirty blood transfusion.

Catherine is dedicated to the charity and travels out regularly, last visiting in January – for a long weekend to meet a potential donor.

“ I spent more time in the air than in the country,” she laughs.

What would Angus think of all this work being done in his name?

Articulate, thoughtful and vivacious, she is thrown, though only momentarily : “I've not idea actually. Gosh it's hard to say...I think...ermm....you know...

“ He was hugely supportive of the Tibetan community and the marginalised communities that he came across in his work as a photojournalist.

“ We certainly wanted to give something back to the Burmes communities we travelled to on the trip where he died. I think he would be really thrilled in his own quiet way.”

Angus took ill on a trip to Myanmar and despite a desperate race back to the airport to return to Australia for treatment, he died at Yangon airport.

Catherine agrees the trauma was a surreal experience: “There was an out of body element to it when it was happening.

“ His doctor back in Sydney said we could have been outside the best hopsital on London or Sydney and it would not have made a difference.”

The couple were engaged and she wears a wedding band. His ashes are currently with his parents in Australia, but Catherine is keen to bring them over to her home in Skelton.

She doesn't have a partner. There doesn't seem to be the room for anyone else. It seems as though they are still an item. Married even.

“ Oh, yes, probably, yes ," she says cautiously.

" People ask me whether I would remarry or whatever. I guess it would have to be someone pretty exceptional to replace him.

“ I'm really busy and it's not something I'm actively looking for or thinking about.

“ I don't even know if that person exists. If they do they are pr o bably already taken!” she laughs.

A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, travel and independent living have been key factors in her life.

Born in Edinburgh, she spent her early years in Oxford and was schooled

mainly in Italy and Vienna before gaining a degree in modern European languages at Durham University.

Her parents were running a United World College in Norway when she graduated.

She took a job as an agent for screen writers and theatre directors before moving to India in 2002 to help rebuild schools on the salt flats in

Gujarat, which had been devastated in the 2001 earthquake.

Catherine planned to spend a yeart there, but stayed until 2008.

She moved up into the mountains and became involved with the Tibetan exile community, setting up a non-profit making Fairtrade manufacturing outlet Kokonor, which grew to train and employ more than 30 seamstresses from Tibet.

When her father died in 2008 she returned home.

She had read Rory's books and when she heard he was standing to be an MP in the 2010 election, she volunteered to help his campaign.

“ I was a real Cameroonian, I liked what he was doing and saying and wanted to be part of that campaign,” she explains.

The election victory offered her the chance of running the office for the new MP for Penrith and The Border and she settled in Cumbria.

While many speak of Stewart as a possible PM, she has her own ambitions of becoming an MP and is on the approved Parliamentary candidates list for the Conservative party.

With her experiences how does she align herself to any particular party?

“ Nobody who subscribes to any party can truly say that they are 100% signed up to every single policy.

“ I've seen a lot of what doesn't work in the world and I've seen a lot of what does work and my experiences have come together to teach me that what works best ius when you employ people to take control of their destiny and to give them confidence.

“ Confidence really comes when you almost force people to face their fears and do it.

“ It is not about giving people handouts, it is about giving them skills and tools to go out and become self-sufficient while still looking after vulnerable people who need our support. That's what we're doing in Burma.”

She says it is amazing how many people think running a charity and being a Conservative are mutually exclusive.

“ Being Conservative doesn't mean having a lack of empathy, but we need more compassionate Conservatives to come out and say that's what they are.

“ We need to wind back now on public sector cuts and really be honest about how much we value our public servants and better communicate the policies that we have that have positive benefits.”

Now is a particularly toxic time for politics, but that does not put her off standing for election: “It is a horrible environment and I think you sink or you swim. If we deter people from politics, it can only get worse.

“ The more I see of the trolling and the nastiness , the more it makes me want to get into politics. I would hate to see a future where we have driven out good people from politics.

“ Maybe I'm being naive but I think we've seen through history that things come around again and we will return to a more pleasant and less combative environment after Brexit no doubt and I would like to be around when that happens so we can actually get back to how to make people's lives better.

“ Let's hope we come out the other end to a country where we can still be open and internationalist.

“ It is more important than ever to have reasonable people in the middle.”

Away from politics and the charity, what downtime she does have is spent with Griselda, her eight-year-old Saluki and out running,

Catherine ran the Great Cumbrian Run for her charity last year and will be running the Loch Ness marathon this year for Macmilllan in memory of her dad Bruce who died 10 years ago.

She enjoys life in Cumbria - it is the longest she has stayedanywhere in her adult life.

“ It has been amazing. I love Cumbria, I love it! I can't believe I've lived here for nearly 10 years!” she smiles.

“ I couldn't be happier. Whenever I get off the train at Penrith station you feel the weight of the world fall off and you are back in the most beautiful county in England. I'm very lucky.

“ It has been a bit of a foreign posting because I'll always be an off-comer but I've made some amazing friends here and feel really really lucky to be here.”

* We Were Kings is being screened at Rheged cinema, near Penrith, on May 9. For tickets, go to www.bit.ly/wewere kings

For more information on the Angus McDonald Trust, go to www.angusmcdonaldtrust.org