MONTREAL — After more than 30 years living abroad compiling a dreamy resume, the roving, restless intellect and self-described "lone wolf'' who rocketed home to subject himself to the risky rigours of politics now faces an uncertain future.

Michael Ignatieff didn't need to give voice to the torment he felt after his loss of the Liberal leadership. It was etched on his face as television lenses were trained mercilessly on him for 20 minutes beyond the moment he realized he would fall short after leading every day of the 10-month campaign except voting day.

Perhaps it was the prospect of such a loss that prompted him to hedge his bets when he was asked early in the race if he would remain a Liberal MP if he failed to attain his goal.

"Depends on who's leader,'' he admitted.

Ignatieff would have no end of options to tempt him should he choose to eschew the anonymity associated with a backbench MP.

The author of 16 books published in 19 languages (including a Governor General's Award-winner for non-fiction and one shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize), Ignatieff has taught at Cambridge University, Oxford and the London School of Economics and, most recently, headed the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard.

In between, he worked for BBC TV, produced film documentaries and was a member of a couple of high-level UN commissions.

"I am a lone wolf, I'm not an organization man,'' Ignatieff said in a 1992 interview in Saturday Night magazine, shortly after publication of his critically panned novel, Asya.

While resurrecting 14-year-old quotes to define a politician can be a mug's game, one presumes the then-45-year-old Ignatieff knew something of himself.

As a war correspondent, he says he's been shot at -- though "happily have not returned fire.''

"I think I have a lot of real-life experience.''

He's certainly had a really interesting life.

Ignatieff is the product of a distinguished Canadian diplomat, George Ignatieff, of czarist Russian descent, combined with a maternal lineage rooted in Canada's intellectual ballast.

His uncle, George Grant, wrote Lament for a Nation. His great-grandfather was a principal of Queen's University. Former governor general Vincent Massey was his great-uncle.

Born in Toronto in 1947 but almost immediately whisked abroad with his family, Ignatieff returned to Canada at age 11 to board at Upper Canada College, a tony bastion of the English-Canadian elite. He was a standout student, debater and athlete. Classmates have recounted how even then Ignatieff spoke of wanting to become prime minister one day.

He graduated to the University of Toronto, then Harvard -- along the way working on Pierre Trudeau's 1968 Liberal leadership campaign.

"I'm in politics and in the race in part because of the inspiration of having known him as a kid,'' Ignatieff now says of Trudeau. "He was a towering Canadian, and an enormous personal example to me of just sheer, raw courage.

"He wasn't always right, though.''

Ignatieff has been variously celebrated and vilified this fall for re-introducing the old constitutional bugbear into the federal political discourse.

He's championed the eventual re-opening of the Constitution to get Quebec formally onside, and among the eight Liberal leadership candidates he was the principal advocate pushing a party motion to have Quebec recognized as a nation.

Ignatieff also caused a furor when he said he wasn't losing sleep over the deaths of Lebanese civilians during Israeli airstrikes this summer, then subsequently accused Israel of war crimes.

In January 2003, while heading a U.S. major human rights institute, he supported American intentions to invade Iraq.

It might have been those musings _ and his suggestion in the late stages of the campaign that Quebec constituted a nation _ that spooked Liberals who were aching for another shot at power nearly a year after they squandered it.

"He's clearly very bright,'' Conservative Senator Hugh Segal observed last month.

"But it's also clear that he has yet to make the distinction between politics and a graduate seminar.''

Ignatieff said he regrets nothing.

"Party renewal means nothing, party renewal is just hot air, unless this party is prepared to talk about serious issues in a calm, thoughtful way.''

Ignatieff insists he "leads with principles, not with my chin. With principles, ideas, vision.''

"I am what I am,'' says Ignatieff.

"You can only run a good campaign if you run as who you are. And this is who I am. I'm stuck with it.''