Ian Bell (7 January 1956 – 10 December 2015) was a Scottish journalist and author who won the Orwell Prize for political journalism in 1997.
[2][3] His mother was Helen Bell (née Mackay), a personnel worker with Edinburgh city water board.
[5] Bell applied to a graduate trainee scheme at The Scotsman but instead joined the newspaper in 1978 as a library assistant and shortly after became a sub-editor.
[2][3] He also wrote articles for the paper on rock and pop music, from the end of the seventies until 1986, when he became the literary editor.
[2][3] He was an active member of the National Union of Journalists, where he was Father of the Chapel, a role equivalent to shop steward.
Once Upon A Time is a 590-page work which covers Dylan's career up to and including his fifteenth studio album "Blood on the Tracks".
[15][16][17] He wrote a novel Whistling in the Dark which was listed in catalogues by Mainstream in 1992 as "coming soon" but remained unpublished, with Bell reworking it several times.