Adrian Bell

Adrian Bell (1901-1980), the son of a newspaper editor, 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 form a farm trilogy. 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).

External links

• Adrian Bell Society
• Adrian Bell 1901-1980 by Martin Bell
• A Walk in Adrian Bell Country