Occupation Journalist and writer | ||
Books Once Upon a Time: The Lives, Time Out of Mind: The Lives of B, Dreams of exile, Dreams of Exile: Robert Lo, Maths for the Building | ||
Ian Bell (7 January 1956 – 10 December 2015) was a Scottish journalist who won the Orwell Prize for political journalism in 1997.
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Early life
Bell was born in Edinburgh, attending Portobello High School and the University of Edinburgh. He was a great-great-nephew of James Connolly, the Irish revolutionary.
Career
Bell wrote two volumes of a biography of Bob Dylan and one of Robert Louis Stevenson, Dreams of Exile, which the Saltire Society awarded Best First Book in 1994.
He wrote for The Herald, The Sunday Herald, The Scotsman the Daily Record and The Times Literary Supplement. He worked as the Scottish editor of The Observer. Bell was a noted advocate of Scottish nationalism over the course of his career.
He was named columnist of the year at the Scottish Press Awards 2012.