Welcome to my website where I publish regular blogs about subjects that interest me, concern me, or are just about my work as a writer.
As well as the blogs there are also photographs and short videos mostly inspired by my poetry or just because I want to share them.
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
Wolfie in Paris 2025/2026 Part Seven – Frank Gehry’s Palace in the Bois de Boulogne
The Fondation Louis Vuitton by Frank Gehry with David Hockney and Gerhard Richter – three old masters under one roof. Fondation Luis Vuitton (2014) In 2025 and then again in 2026, I visited the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris’ sensational Frank Gehry designed art gallery which opened in 2014. It is set like a giant sailing…
Wolfie in Paris 2025/2026 Part Six – Two Nights At The Opera
1. Rigoletto I have been an enthusiast for opera for all of my adult life and even a bit longer as my first opera was as a schoolboy (it was Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at Glyndebourne in the UK). It was a bug that bit me that night and the effect has never worn off. I…
Wolfie in Paris 2025/2026 Part Five – Three Great Churches and the Genius of French Organ Music.
Cathédrale Notre-Dame Notre Dame Cathedral, 3 June 2025 Notre Dame Cathedral, 15 April 2019 In June 2025, I was lucky enough to get tickets for one of the first concerts to be held in the recently reopened cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. I thought going to a concert might be the best way of…
Wolfie in Paris 2025/26 Part Four – La Louvre 2025
In my previous blog I said had avoided going to Montmartre in the past because of the crowds but decided to go along anyway this time on my recent trips to Paris. This is also the reason why last year was the first time I had visited possibly the most well-known classical fine art gallery…
Wolfie in Paris 2025/26 – Part Three Montmartre
I have visited Paris more than a few times in my life, mostly on short trips for work, in my television days, but there were two places, maybe the most famous ones, where I never quite brought myself to go. One was the Louvre and the other was Montmartre – both world-famous destinations for anyone…
Wolfie in Paris 2025/26 – Part Two Le Marais
I have stayed in Paris twice in the last year, in May 2025 and then in February 2026, and took the same apartment for both visits. There is something special in visiting and then revisiting familiar places in other countries. It felt like that to me in the Parisian district of Le Marais. Once an…
Wolfie in Paris 2025/26 Part One – Disco and Jazz
In May 2025, I spent two weeks in Paris – I’d been there many times before, mostly for work, but never for such an extended period. I wanted to allow it to get under my skin. I think it worked because, I returned in February this year and plan to make Paris trips regular events…
Nigerian Modernism at Tate Modern
I went to Nigerian Modernism, Art and Independence, the impressive exhibition at London’s Tate Modern last week, 19th March. There are a lot of art works here, a vibrant mix of paintings, tapestries, ceramics and sculpture from the 1940s until the end of the 20th Century. In its nine large rooms, the exhibition confounded my…
