I have a new photographic portrait
Colin Bell
Colin Bell is a novelist, poet and blogger. He was born in a Franciscan convent in Surrey but grew up in Sussex – almost everything that he has done, he did for the first time in Brighton where his novels are set. After working in Manchester for Granada Television, he returned to Brighton. He now lives in Lewes because, he says, it’s the urban equivalent of BBC Radio Four.
His first novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer of Love (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013) was long-listed for the Polari Prize. His second Brighton novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames (Ward Wood Publishing) was published in January 2017. His poetry has been published in the UK and the USA where he was nominated for the 2016 Pushcart Prize.
Before becoming a writer, Colin Bell was a TV producer-director and executive producer making arts programmes
for ITV, Channel Four, the BBC and also for American, Japanese and German broadcasters.
Staying in with my laptop
I bought my first laptop last year as a luxurious add-on to the desktop computer that sits in the office room where I spend most of my writing days here at home in Lewes, UK. I suppose I should confess…
My thanks to Acumen for publishing my poem about short-sightedness
I was, as they used to say in Manchester, dead chuffed to have one of my poems published in the latest edition of the distinguished British literary journal, Acumen. The poem was a remembered moment, an epiphany, in fact, when,…
100 years in The Waste Land
T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece is 100 years old this year and I am preparing to read the complete poem online in the virtual world known as Secondlife to mark the centenary of its publication. Yes, virtual worlds really do support writers…
Ten years on – my life in two photographs
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…
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…
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.…
Titian’s Nudes are the subject of my new Fibonacci poems.
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,…
Artemisia – the art of self-defence
Artemisia Gentileschi at The National Gallery, London. 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 –…