James Bell (1950–2021) was born in Edinburgh, where he remained until the late 1980s when he moved to the other end of the country, to live in rural North Devon. Having left school at 16, he first took up an apprenticeship, and then pursued a number of different jobs in order to support himself as an actor and mime-artist. After getting married, he went to Stirling University as a mature student, and took a degree in English. After graduating, he went into sales and marketing, but became tired of the corporate life, and acquired a postgraduate diploma that provided the pathway for work as a Careers Adviser. It was this role that he took up in Devon, and in which he remained until his eventual retirement.

An occasional poet in his earlier years, and an unpublished novelist later, he became active in Devon’s poetry scene and for many years co-hosted the monthly Uncut Poets reading series in Exeter. Towards the end of that period, he published two collections with the London press, Tall-Lighthouse, the just vanished place (2008, a chapbook) and fishing for beginners (2010, a full-length collection). At the turn of the decade, he moved with his wife to live in a Breton village, some 75 miles west of Rennes, where he continued to write. Shortly after his death, Shearsman Books published his On the Royal Road — with Hiroshige on the Tōkaidō.