Sir Harold Idris Bell (2 October 1879 – 22 January 1967) was a British museum curator, papyrologist (specialising in

Roman Egypt Roman Egypt was an imperial province of the Roman Empire from 30 BC to AD 642. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai. It was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judaea, ...

) and scholar of Welsh literature. Bell was born at Epworth,

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (), abbreviated ''Lincs'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber regions of England. It is bordered by the East Riding of Yorkshire across the Humber estuary to th ...

to an English father and a Welsh mother. His maternal grandfather, John Hughes of Rhuddlan, was a Welsh speaker.Thomas Parry (2001)
Bell, Sir Harold Idris (1879–1967), scholar and translator
In ''Dictionary of Welsh Biography''. He was educated at Nottingham High School and Oriel College, Oxford. In 1903, he joined the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

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, and in 1946 he went to live at Aberystwyth, naming his house Bro Gynin, a sign of his respect for the poet Dafydd ap Gwilym. Bell was appointed

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(OBE) 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 (CB) in 1936 and was knighted in 1946. He was president of the International Association of Papyrologists from 1947 to 1955. He was elected corresponding member of several Continental and American learned societies, and was awarded honorary degrees by the Universities of Wales, Liverpool, Michigan and Brussels. In 1932 the British Academy elected him a Fellow, and he was president from 1946 to 1950. As president in these post-war years, he worked hard to re-establish scholarly links and co-operation across Europe, especially in his own field of papyrology. He was also a poet and translator.Se
Forgotten Poets of the First World War
/ref> 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.

References

1879 births 1967 deaths People from Epworth, Lincolnshire Alumni of Oriel College, Oxford Employees of the British Library Knights Bachelor Companions of the Order of the Bath Officers of the Order of the British Empire British classical scholars British Egyptologists Welsh literature Presidents of the British Academy Presidents of The Roman Society Papyrologists People educated at Nottingham High School {{UK-archaeologist-stub