When I was first approached in February 1996 to ask whether I would be prepared to take on a new, part-time job as the British government's Special Representative for Cyprus, I had some idea of what I was being let in for, but not that it would last for seven years. Although I had never actually set foot on the island, I had, like many other British diplomats, bumped into the Cyprus problem from time to time during the 36 years of my professional career in the Diplomatic Service, which had ended the year before with my retirement from the post of UN ambassador in New York. I had been involved in the negotiations for a trade agreement between the European Community and Cyprus when Britain joined the EC in 1973; I had subsequently participated in the negotiations that developed this agreement into a customs union and, more relevant than either of these two experiences, I had a ringside seat for the last major attempt by the United Nations to negotiate a comprehensive settlement in 1992 and the subsequent, equally abortive, effort to agree a major package of Confidence-Building Measures on the island which had finally run into the sands in 1994. So I could not be said to be unaware of the singular intractability of the problem, nor of the capacity of the main players to spin out any negotiation until the Greek Kalends, nor of their preference for playing the blame game over making any serious effort to get to grips with the core issues in an attempt to reach a settlement. Why did I say yes? Partly, I suspect, out of a reluctance to quit entirely the scene of international diplomacy in which I had spent the whole of my professional life. Partly also, like a mountain climber drawn towards an unclimbed peak, simply because it was there. The Cyprus problem was certainly an unclimbed peak, said by many - particularly by those who had tried to climb it and failed - to be un-climbable; so there was an element of irresistible challenge. And then there were less personal reasons. The commitment given by the European Union in 1995 to open accession negotiations with Cyprus, divided or not, within six months of the end of the Inter- Governmental Conference which was drawing up the Amsterdam Treaty (in 1997), meant that we were sliding towards a parting of the ways which might either consolidate the division of the island or lead to its entering reunited into the European Union. It also had the potential to lead to a serious crisis in the relations between Turkey and the European Union and thus to a threat to the peace and stability of the Eastern Mediterranean. So the case for making a further determined attempt to reach a settlement was a serious one.

On a sweltering day in July, 1878 the men of the 42nd Royal Highlanders -- the Black Watch -- waded ashore at Larnaca Bay to begin the British occupation of Cyprus. Today, Britons on sunbeds colonize the same stretch of sand, the latest visitors to an island which has long held a special place in the English imagination -- and a controversial role in British imperial ambitions. Drawing on largely unpublished material, Tabitha Morgan reflects on why successive administrations failed, so catastrophically, to engage with their Cypriot subjects, and how social segregation, confusion about Cypriot identity and the poor caliber of so many administrators all contributed to the bloody conflict that led, finally, to Cypriot independence in 1960. Sweet and Bitter Island explores for the first time the unique bond between Britain and Cyprus and the complex, sometimes tense, relationship between the two nations which endures to the present day. Extensively researched and lyrically written, this is the definitive portrait of British colonial life on the Mediterranean island.