Martin Bell, the former BBC war reporter and Independent MP, served as a soldier in the Suffolk Regiment during the Cyprus emergency between 1957 and 1959. In a chocolate box in the attic many years later he found more than 100 letters that he had sent home to his family. He was not a journalist then, but the letters give a vivid impression of what it was like to be a conscript on active service during the EOKA rebellion against British rule. They describe road blocks and cordons and searches, murders and explosions and riots
and a strategy of armed repression that ultimately failed. From this beginning he has written ‘The End of Empire’. His narrative is a powerful and personal account of the violent process of decolonisation, of the character of the British Army at the time and the impact of National Service on young men who were not much more than ‘kids in uniform’. It also gives a graphic insight into the ultimate futility of the use of force in wars among people and it reveals the true story of the insurgency and the campaign to defeat it. By drawing on recently declassified documents, he shows that Cyprus in the late 1950s was run not by the governor but by a military junta. The army commanders were looking for the knockout blow that would deliver victory, but their misguided tactics served only to strengthen support for their enemy. So ‘The End of Empire’ is much more than a personal reminiscence. It is an absorbing account of the experience of army life from the perspective of a private soldier, and it is the inside story of how Britain tried to crush a violent rebellion sixty years ago. SELLING POINTS: . Former BBC correspondent’s graphic personal account of National Service with the Suffolk Regiment in the 1950s . Based on the letters he wrote home to his family at the time . Vivid portrait of life in the British army sixty years ago . Inside view of the British army’s operations against the EOKA rebels in Cyprus . Draws on declassified documents to reveal the true story behind the army’s counter-insurgency tactics . Insight into British colonial policy during the last days of the empire 20 b/w photos