Martin Bell, the former BBC war reporter and Independent MP, served as a soldier in the British army in Cyprus in the late 1950s during the EOKA rebellion against British rule, and recently he discovered the letters he had written home during the conflict. They describe road blocks and cordons and searches, murders and explosions and riots - and a strategy of armed repression that failed. Now, almost sixty years later, he has used these letters to write The End of Empire. His narrative is a powerful personal account of the violent process of decolonization, 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'. He also gives a graphic insight into the futility of the use of force in wars among the people and reveals, for the first time, the true story of the insurgency and the campaign to defeat it, for recently declassified documents show that the army commanders adopted misguided tactics that served only to strengthen support for their enemy.

Martin Bell, OBE is a former BBC war reporter and Independent MP who is now a British UNICEF ambassador. After leaving school he served as a national serviceman and was posted to Cyprus during the emergency. He then took an English degree at Cambridge and joined the BBC where he established a reputation as a leading war reporter coving conflicts in Vietnam, the Middle East, Nigeria, Angola, Northern Ireland and the Balkans. After leaving the BBC he was elected as the Independent MP for Tatton. His books include In Harm's Way, An Accidental MP, Through Gates of Fire, The Truth That Sticks and A Very British Revolution.