John Bowyer Bell (November 15, 1931 – August 23, 2003) was an Americanhistorian,artist andart critic. He was best known as aterrorism expert.

Bell was born into anEpiscopalian family in 1931 inNew York City.^[1] The family later moved toAlabama, from where Bell attendedWashington and Lee University inLexington, Virginia, majoring in history.^[2] He also studied art, and discovered he had "total visual memory"—the equivalent ofperfect pitch in a singer.^[2] His first solo art showing was in the college library in his senior year.^[3] He considered becoming a professional artist and made frequent visits to New York to visit other artists, including his heroFranz Kline, but committed to academia.^[2][3] Bell graduated in 1953, and began studying theSpanish Civil War atDuke University inNorth Carolina.^[3] Bell interrupted his studies at Duke after being awarded aFulbright, and travelled toItaly to study at theUniversity of Rome.^[2] Bell travelled Europe interviewing veterans of the Spanish Civil War, and in Rome he mixed with writers and artists includingCy Twombly.^[2] After returning to America, Bell completed hisdoctorate at Duke in 1958.^[1]

After graduating, Bell began teaching at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology,Harvard University andTrinity School inManhattan.^[2][3] In 1962, he married Charlotte Rockey, anEgyptologist, and they moved into an apartment in Manhattan.^[2] In New York, Bell socialised with the likes ofRobert Rauschenberg,Jasper Johns,Jack Kerouac andFrank Stella at theCedar Tavern.^[2] Bell exhibited his paintings and collages at the Allan Stone Gallery, and collected paintings and sculptures by artists includingJohn Chamberlain.^[2] Bell was fascinated by globalterrorism conflicts and decided to "write [his] way back into academia".^[2][3]

While researching theMiddle East, he discovered that theIrgun drew inspiration from theIrish Republican Army (IRA) and theIrish War of Independence, and began to study the IRA.^[1][3] Bell and his family travelled toCounty Carlow in theRepublic of Ireland in 1965, where he spent several months researching theRepublican Movement.^[3] He discovered little had been published on Irish history after 1922, and the state archives were closed until the 1980s.^[1] He began research in theNational Library of Ireland, and also interviewedIrish republicans in aKilkennypublic house and hotels inDublin.^[1]

In 1966, his first book was published;Besieged: Seven Cities Under Siege. That same year he returned to Dublin with his family to continue his research. In 1967, he made his first visit toNorthern Ireland where he attended a meeting of the bannedRepublican Clubs.^[1] In 1969, he published his second book on the Middle East;The Long War: Israel and the Arabs since 1946.^[2]The Troubles began in Northern Ireland in 1969, and Bell'sThe Secret Army: the IRA 1916–1970 was published the following year, and was one of the first detailed histories of the IRA, along withThe IRA byTim Pat Coogan, which was also published in 1970.^[3] After the publication ofThe Secret Army Bell lived mostly in New York andLondon and continued to visit Ireland annually.^[1][3] While researching in Ireland, Bell wastear gassed and shot at during riots in Belfast, which he described as "field work a bit too near the centre of the field".^[1] Bell continued to travel extensively, researching in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia as part of a career described as "talking to terrorists, gunmen, mad dogs and mercenaries".^[1][3] He was held hostage inJordan, shot at inLebanon, kidnapped inYemen and deported fromKenya.^[3]Horn of Africa: Strategic Magnet in the Seventies was published in 1973. In 1974, he began writing with the "Insight Team" ofThe Sunday Times about the war inCyprus. This was followed by the 1976 publication ofOn Revolt: Strategies of National Liberation, for which he interviewed over a hundred participants from revolts against theBritish Empire.^[3]Terror Out of Zion, published in 1977, covered theIrgun andLehi'sguerrilla campaign in theBritish Mandate of Palestine.^[3] Following the death of his first wife in 1981, Bell married an Irishwoman, Norah Browne fromCounty Kerry, whom he had met while filming his 1972 documentary,The Secret Army.^[2]

He continued to work in other areas; he was anadjunct professor atColumbia University'sSchool of International and Public Affairs, and he held the position ofresearch associate at the university'sInstitute of War and Peace Studies.^[1] He was a member of theCouncil on Foreign Relations and founded a consultancy, the International Analysis Centre, whose clients included theUnited States Department of State, theUnited States Department of Justice, theCentral Intelligence Agency and American television networks.^[1] He continued to work as an independent scholar, carrying out research with the aid of grants; he received over sevenGuggenheim Fellowships and turned down aRockefeller Humanities Award.^[1][2] Bell also continued his career in painting, receiving aPollock-Krasner Fellowship and exhibiting work inspired by the conflicts he witnessed.^[1][2] From 1979 onward, his paintings were exhibited annually at the Taylor Gallery in Dublin, and he also held exhibitions in Manhattan andHungary.^[2] Bell launched a career as an art critic in the 1990s, writing for New York-based journalReview, and he was also commissioned to write catalogue entries for galleries and museum retrospectives.^[2][3]

External videos
Booknotes interview with Bell onThe Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence, 1967-1992, June 6, 1993,C-SPAN

Bell continued writing about the IRA and the ongoing events of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and in 1994 he was a speaker atWest Belfast Festival, where he suggested the IRA was the only organisation in Northern Ireland that understood its problems.^[3] In 1996, he made headlines in Ireland and abroad after meeting with the Army Council of thedissident republican splinter groupContinuity IRA at a secret rural location in Ireland.^[2] Former IRA memberAnthony McIntyre claimed Bell had a pro-Irish republican bias, with McIntyre stating "Bowyer Bell's long familiarity with Irish Republicanism once prompted the caustic comment that there are none more vindictive than a reformed gunman".^[2][4] As well as releasing updated versions ofThe Secret Army, Bell continued to write about other aspects of the conflicts in Ireland and the Middle East.^[1]Cheating and Deception was published in 1991,The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967–1992 in 1993,In Dubious Battle: The Dublin and Monaghan Bombings 1972–1974 andBack to the Future: The Protestants and a United Ireland in 1996, andDynamics of the Armed Struggle in 1998.^[1][2][3] With the aid of a grant from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Bell returned to the Middle East in 2000 to conduct research for his next book, onEgyptianIslamic terrorism.^[1] As withThe Secret Army first being published shortly after the start of the Troubles, Bell's timing was again good withMurders on the Nile: The World Trade Center and Global Terrorism being published in 2002, shortly after theSeptember 11, 2001, attacks on the United States byAl-Qaeda.^[3]

Bell died fromrenal failure in a New York hospital on August 23, 2003.^[2][5] His paintings continue to be exhibited since his death.^[6]

• 1931 births
• 2003 deaths
• American art critics
• American expatriates in Italy
• 20th-century American historians
• American male non-fiction writers
• 20th-century American painters
• American male painters
• 21st-century American painters
• Deaths from kidney failure in New York (state)
• Columbia University faculty
• Duke University alumni
• Harvard University faculty
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty
• Sapienza University of Rome alumni
• Washington and Lee University alumni
• Painters from New York City
• 20th-century American male writers
• Historians from New York City
• American collage artists

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