Adrian Bell
Adrian Bell (
1901 –
1980) was an English journalist-farmer.
The son of a newspaper editor, he was born in London and educated at
Uppingham School in
Rutland. At the age of 19 he went off to the countryside in
Hundon,
Suffolk to learn about farming. He then farmed in various locations for the next sixty years, including the rebuilding of a near derelict 89 acre smallholding at Redisham, near
Beccles.
Out of his early experiences came the book
Corduroy, published in 1930. Bell's friend, the author and poet
Edmund Blunden, advised him and helped secure his first publishing deal.
Corduroy was an immediate best-seller and was followed by two more books on the countryside,
Silver Ley in 1931 and
The Cherry Tree in 1932, the three books forming a farm trilogy. The popularity of literary back-to-the-land writing in England in the 1930s can be put in the context of, for example,
Vita Sackville-West's long narrative poem
The Land. The
Penguin Books paperback edition of
Corduroy came out in 1940 and was much prized by soldiers serving during the Second World War.
Bell wrote the
Countryman's Notebook column in the
Eastern Daily Press from 1950, and produced over twenty other books on the countryside, including
Apple Acre (1942),
Sunrise to Sunset (1944),
The Budding Morrow (1946),
The Flower and the Wheel (1949),
Music in the Morning, (1954),
A Suffolk Harvest (1956), the autobiographical
My Own Master (1961) and
The Green Bond (1976).
Bell was also the first compiler of
The Times Crossword, which first appeared in the weekly edition on 2 January 1930, and is credited as helping to establish its distinctive
cryptic clue style. He set around 5,000 puzzles between
1930 and
1978.
His son,
Martin Bell, is a well-known former
BBC war reporter, and was an independent
Member of Parliament between 1997 and 2001.
Things that Endure, a half-hour BBC radio documentary on Adrian Bell presented by his son, was broadcast on
September 2 2005 on
Radio 4. His daughter,
Anthea Bell is a famous translator best known for her translations of the
Asterix comics.
Ann Lynda Gander has written a biography entitled
Adrian Bell, Voice of the Countryside (Holm Oak Publishing, 2001, ISBN 0953340619). There is also an Adrian Bell Society.
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Adrian Bell Society*
Adrian Bell 1901-1980 by Martin Bell*
A Walk in Adrian Bell Country
