Something to Write Home About

As a member of the security forces my personal involvement with events in Cyprus during the emergency, motivated me, years later, to carry out extensive research and then to write a novel about it which I called Something to Write Home About. I wrote it in part because many of the truly dreadful acts of extreme violence perpetrated by the terrorists were excused by the politicians and clerics who benefitted from the outcome. The similarity to Vladimir Putin's methods is unmistakable.

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The story is set against a background of real events and provides an insight into the political issues that gave rise to the conflict. It is the story of a young journalist, Harry Ledbetter, who in 1956 was sent to Cyprus to replace a reporter who had been badly injured in a car crash. He arrived when Cyprus was riven by the violent terrorist campaign waged on the orders of George Grivas inspired by a devious and ambitious archbishop.

"My town groups would execute police who were too zealous on the British behalf...To shoot down your enemies in the street may be unprecedented, but I was looking for results, not precedents," George Grivas.

Archbishop Makarios had vowed to unite Cyprus with Greece (Enosis). This was totally opposed by the Turkish section of the population but he ignored their protests and on April 1st 1955 empowered George Grivas to start the campaign of sabotage, terrorism, bloodshed and coercion.

In pursuit of Enosis Grivas used misinformation and false propaganda backed up with violence and intimidation to lay waste that lovely island and intimidate an innocent population in pursuit of the unachievable ideal of Union with Greece. The Turkish minority were slow to react at first but later responded to violence with violence and the British army had the task of maintaining law and order.

Something to Write Home About, will be published April 2022.

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