Martin Bell

Martin Bell, OBE is a British UNICEF Ambassador and former broadcast war reporter. He became the Member of Parliament for Tatton from 1997 to 2001. Bell’s political career was loosely based on The Channel 4 drama Mr White Goes to Westminster, based on his own experiences as an amateur drama producer.

About Martin Bell in brief

Summary Martin BellMartin Bell, OBE is a British UNICEF Ambassador and former broadcast war reporter. He became the Member of Parliament for Tatton from 1997 to 2001. Bell is the son of author-farmer Adrian Bell, compiler of the first ever Times crossword. He was educated at The Leys School in Cambridge and King’s College, Cambridge. He failed to obtain a commission during his two-year national service and served out his time as an acting corporal in the Suffolk Regiment, serving in Cyprus during the emergency. He won the Royal Television Society’s Reporter of the Year award in 1977 and 1993, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1992. Bell’s political career was loosely based on The Channel 4 drama Mr White Goes to Westminster, based on his own experiences as an amateur drama producer.

He is the uncle of Oliver Kamm, now a Times leader writer who served as his political adviser during his term as a Member of parliament. He has a son, Adrian, and a daughter, Anthea Bell, who is a literary translator and author. He joined the BBC as a reporter in Norwich in 1962, aged 24, following his graduation. He moved to London three years later, beginning a distinguished career as a foreign affairs correspondent with his first assignment in Ghana. Over the next thirty years, he covered eleven conflicts and reported from eighty countries, making his name with reports from wars and conflicts in Vietnam, the Middle East, Nigeria, Angola, and in Northern Ireland.