Idris Bell

Who was Idris Bell?

Sir Harold Idris Bell CB OBE was a British papyrologist and scholar of Welsh literature.

Bell was born at Epworth, Lincolnshire to an English father and a Welsh mother. He was educated at Nottingham High School and Oriel College, Oxford. In 1903, he joined the British Museum as an assistant in the Department of Manuscripts and remained there his entire working life, becoming Deputy Keeper of the Department in 1927 and Keeper in 1929. He retired in 1944.

Bell was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1920 civilian war honours for his wartime services as editor of the Food Supplement of the Daily Review of the Foreign Press. He was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1936 and was knighted in 1946.

His son, David Bell, with whom he translated the works of Dafydd ap Gwilym in 1942, was the curator of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea.