Colin Bell

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.

Claiming my Irish inheritance

Most people regard me as a typical Englishman, but, in reality I am, like many people born in the British Isles, a mixture of English, Scottish and Irish. It just happens that I grew up in Sussex in Southern England,…

Hitting the ground running

I’ve been trying to get back to full fitness now for twenty months, nearly two years, after a difficult eight or so years of ill-health. A brain haemorrhage in 2008, and a pulmonary embolism a few years later, in 2013/14,…

I’m Rediscovering Youtube

A few years ago I started to record myself reading some of my poems but also poetry by greater people than me. I moved away from this idea when I ran into computer problems and then forgot about these little…