I am Colin Bell, an Anglo-Irish European citizen based in the UK. I am a novelist and poet, previously a TV producer-director of arts programmes for British, American, German and Japanese broadcasters. I am also known as the blogger Wolfie Wolfgang.
My two novels are Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013) and Blue Notes, Still Frames (Ward Wood Publishing, 2017). They are both available in paperback or as Kindle editions. My debut poetry collection, Remembering Blue (Ward Wood Publishing 2019) is now available. My poetry has been published in various journals and anthologies in the UK and the USA.
Publications
Remembering Blue is the debut poetry collection by Colin Bell, whose novels Stephen Dearsley’s Summer of Love and Blue Notes, Still Frames are also published by Ward Wood.
‘These poems were written during ten years recovering from a life-threatening brain haemorrhage.
‘The poems began before I left hospital. They document, often tangentially, that period, from awakening out of a six-hour coma, through several years of rehabilitation, remembering and decoding – the good things as well as the bad: childhood and adolescence revisited, adult relationships reassessed, and most significantly, what is important now that I am fully recovered.
‘Awakening from that death-like coma was a rebirth. When things were difficult, it helped to remember blue.’
– Colin Bell
It’s Brighton in 1994 Busker Joe lives on the beach with his flute and his troubled Goth girlfriend, Victoria, who’s a singer. He borrows a bath towel for her from Rachel and Alan, a prosperous young couple from the rapidly growing world of computers. The meeting will change all their lives…and other lives too.
There’s Harry, a beach bum drummer; Nico, a transient American who takes revealing photographs of passers-by; Kanti and Diep, mysterious artist twins from Nepal; Lionel and John who reveal more than their bodies on the nudist beach; and pub landladies Jacqueline and Rosemary who top up their income by dabbling in the sex trade.
Joe is always there, somewhere, weaving more than melodies with his flute.
– Colin Bell
It’s 1967 and the start of the Summer of Love. In Brighton, Stephen Dearsley is tempted and intimidated by the way his generation is casting off traditional ways of dress along with the old ways of thinking. His ambition to become a biographer is fulfilled when he’s commissioned to research the life story of the mysterious Austin Randolph
– Colin Bell
Recent posts
Ten years on – my life in two photographs
Me in October 2011 (left) and then in October 2021 (right) photographs by David Stacey The first portrait photograph of me was honest, I thought, no frills, just me as I was that day. sitting in front of the Georgian fireplace in my Lewes home. It was as true an image as photography can deliver….
Have we done enough?
I am thinking about the women and girls of Afghanistan. Was this really the best the world could have done for them? These twenty years of corrupt and ineffectual Afghan governments seemed better than the terrible Taliban regime that proceeded them, and there was some hope that international assistance, not just guns and soldiers, could…
Coming out of my cage
I have been reluctant to post my blogs over the last few months of lockdown and its aftermath here in Lewes, UK. I didn’t feel I had much to add to the millions of comments about the pandemic over the last eighteen months as I am convinced that no one would be interested in what…
The second Covid-19 lockdown here in the UK allows me to work at staying fit.
The hot days of the summer lockdown here in the UK have passed but now it’s second time round for the covid-19 precautions and, in classic English autumn style, it has been raining and, more importantly, it has got cold. No excuse to stop my fitness regime though. Back in July I started doing 25…
Titian’s Nudes are the subject of my new Fibonacci poems.
Titian: Perseus and Andromeda (about 1554-6) Perseus and Andromeda Nude in chains on the rocks she’s picture-perfect. Titian’s Andromeda displayed for us mortals, for hungry beasts, and for Perseus who dives seaward dressed-to-kill in pink and gold robes to slaughter the slavering monster. He’s a boy-hero, pointing his scimitar, playing the man-of-action awed by the…
Artemisia – the art of self-defence
Artemisia Gentileschi at The National Gallery, London. Artemisia: Judith beheading Holofernes (1613-1614) Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Last week I went to the new exhibition at London’s National Gallery. It is the first major exhibition in Britain of the magnificent Baroque paintings by the Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 – 1654), who, still relatively unknown in this…
I had a red door and…
When I moved into my house here in Lewes, the door was red. It was OK, but not great – one of those shades of red that wasn’t quite confident enough to be either red or pink. Anyway, it was fine and I would’ve stuck with it if it hadn’t needed a new letterbox and…
Titian Reunited
LOVE DEATH AND DESIRE Titian’s Six Masterpieces reunited after over 400 years 10 August 2020: I was socially distanced at The National Gallery in London In early March this year, I was looking forward to going to see the National Gallery’s much anticipated Titian exhibition Love Death and Desire. The great Italian Renaissance painter’s six…
