For Whom the Bell Tolls: Light and Dark Verse

By Martin Bell

Martin Bell OBE has been many things – an icon of BBC war reporting, Britain’s first independent MP for 50 years, a UNICEF ambassador, and ‘the man in the white suit’ – a tireless campaigner for honesty and accountability in politics.But as For Whom the Bell Tolls reveals, he’s also a poet of light verse, and here Bell’s poems continue his war by other means on duplicitous politicians, our all-consuming media, the venality of celebrity culture and much more. The earliest poem here was written when Martin was 19; the most recent cover the riots of August 2011, the phone-hacking scandal and the ‘Arab spring’.Oscillating between trenchant satire and touching honesty with often poignant autobiography spiced with gentle humour, Bell presents poems on Tony Blair and Iraq, on Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic, on his hero, Reuters reporter Kurt Schork, and colourful episodes from his work and life, from the chart-topping calypso written about him in St Lucia to his being a guest at Idi Amin’s wedding:‘…that by God / Was well worth doing, if distinctly odd.’

• Language: English
• Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
• Release date: Oct 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781848313217

Martin Bell

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 covering 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.