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
Me Going to London and Having a Great Time 2025 – 2026
Tower Bridge, London Wolfie in London I have been doing a catch-up recently with my blogs. It’s that old excuse, I have been really busy with writing projects and neglected this website over the last year. Forgive me. Now, of course, looking back over recent posts, it looks like I am constantly travelling overseas, well,…
Going back to Finland – 2025 Part Two – The Sibelius Festival
In late August 2025, I returned to Lahti for my fourth Sibelius Festival feeling a bit like a regular. It wasn’t the original plan, but festivals have a habit of growing on us, especially those of us who suffer a bit from the completist bug. At first, it was a question of hearing Sibelius’ music…
Going back to Finland 2025 – Part One – From Lahti to Tampere
Lahti Lahti, Finland I went back to Finland in late August, 2025, my fourth annual visit, call it a pilgrimage, to the Sibelius Festival that is held every year in the small city of Lahti on Lake Vesijärvi, in South Eastern Finland. My first trip was because of the great composer, Jean Sibelius (1865 –…
Wolfie in Paris 2025 – 2026 Part Eight – au revoir.
Arts ancient and modern, some sight-seeing and two great writers’ beds I’ve been looking through the photographs of my two trips to Paris, in June and July 2025 and then again in February this year, as I bring my eight Parisian blogs to a conclusion. It’s been like going on holiday all over again –…
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…
