From Tony Blair and Iraq to the phone-hacking scandal, celebrate National Poetry Day with Martin Bell

Posted on 2013/10/03 , tagged as martin bell

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It’s National Poetry Day today! Now, we’re not necessarily known for publishing poetry, but Martin Bell’s For Whom The Bell Tolls is a little different.

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. Bell’s poems continue his war by other means on duplicitous politicians, our all-consuming media, the venality of celebrity culture and much more.

Here’s a little taster – ‘Cleggmania’
On one side stood the hammer and the sickle
And on the other forces of reaction.
But times were hard, allegiances were fickle
And we disliked the politics of faction.

So we triangulated. It seemed brainier.
To set the old divisiveness aside.
Two parties wed, the smaller one the bride.
The bliss was brief: Within a year Cleggmania
Had turned into something clearer Cleggicide.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is now available in paperback from all good bookshops.