17th March 2025

Michael Bell’s True Confession

Born in July 1941, he spent his early childhood in Dunmow, Essex where his parents had moved at the beginning of the war. The family moved back to Welling in 1946 where Michael attended St Stephens Primary School till starting at St Mary’s College in 1952.

The school had an intimidating Wild West atmosphere where bullies roamed unchecked until the arrival of Fr McKeown who soon claimed the monopoly of violence. With Fr McIver and the move to the new building, things improved although he has nostalgia for those wilder years. The new building included a hall with a stage just as Adrian Jarvis started the annual school plays which were perhaps the most memorable experiences of the school.  

Leaving St Mary’s, UCL (1959-62)

Michael left school with 40% in A level English, the lowest possible pass, which today would not get him into any university. Luckily, Oxford and London selected on interview and then took you whatever the mark. He went to UCL where he made lifelong friends.  

France Lyon, (1962-3)

Michael went to Lyon, France, as an English Assistant to improve his French. During the de Gaulle/Adenauer friendship students of France and Germany spent time in each other’s countries. Hearing German for the first time he wanted to learn some. So he came home and taught for a year at St Stephen’s Catholic Secondary School in Welling while preparing to go to Germany as an Assistant.

UK, Welling (1963-4)

St Stephen’s was a good experience. The headmaster, Mr Redmond, and a dedicated staff used their limited resources well for the often quite disadvantaged boys. Michael acquired a teaching certificate on the say-so of the headmaster as was possible at that time. Subsequently, it would be necessary to take a PGCE. In recent years he was tracked down and paid a monthly Teachers’ Pension as well as a lump sum. At the end of that year he set off for Erlangen, near Nuremberg.

Germany, Erlangen (1964-5)

In Erlangen/Nuremberg he taught in three different schools. They were mixed schools with a mature and positive attitude to education, quite a contrast from his experience of St Mary’s.

At the end of the year, with still no plans, he had a visit from a UCL friend who had taken a post at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. An air-mail letter to the Departmental Chair resulted in a job by return of post.

Canada, London (1965-70)

The post was for graduate students working on a higher degree. Michael discovered that it was possible uniquely at the University of London to register for a higher degree externally providing one had three years residence as an undergraduate. He duly registered for an external MA and set off.

With this experience of academic teaching he decided to make it his career but at that time it became necessary to have a PhD rather than an MA. Believing his thesis on D H Lawrence was worth a Doctorate, he delayed writing it up until he got it registered as PhD. This meant spending five years (1965-70) in London, Ontario, much longer than originally imagined.

But here he met his wife, Susan, an NUS ‘actress of the year’ in the UK. She did a lot of acting locally including a year with top Canadian professional company in Toronto. Michael also did  some acting including the cockney soldier in Brendan Behan’s The Hostage. They helped form a small company, called Rhubarb. Two other couples who met in this theatrical confraternity are still together and good friends.

Ithaca, NY (1970-73)

He took off the year 1969-70 to write up his thesis but at Christmas he heard his father was dying following a lung cancer operation. Michael’s return home in the New Year was multiply fortunate. His father rallied and lived for another 22 years but Michael was able to organize submitting the thesis and to start the protracted process of getting a visa to go to the US where he now had a job waiting in the autumn.

Neither he nor his wife had planned to stay in London, Ontario, and she was now interested in giving up acting to do a PhD in American Literature. Michael wrote to various US universities but with his odd background he had no purchase there. Luckily a colleague from UWO had just moved to Ithaca College in upstate NY where they had a post available. He took the job and was given tenure a year or so later.  

Ithaca NY is a beautiful small town at the foot of the fifty-mile glacial Lake Cayuga, one of the ‘Finger Lakes’. They could well have stayed there but had never planned to emigrate, their families being in the UK. He took a year’s unpaid leave and cannot now imagine how they were supposed to live especially since at that time it was very difficult to come from the US to the UK for academic posts. This was partly because British institutions did not want to pay the then heavy expense of a transatlantic flight.

UK, Warwick (1973-2009)

When he applied for a post at Warwick he offered to pay his own flight for the interview but the Chairman had a better wheeze. He was able to offer a temporary post on his own say-so. So Michael was given a temporary post with the option of making it permanent after a year. He remained at Warwick until retiring in 2009.

Michael’s children Agnes and David were born in 1974 and 1977 respectively, although his marriage to Susan ended in 1996. They went to Cambridge and UCL respectively and then on to admirable careers. Agnes takes groups of troubled young people on outdoor activities while David is a senior manager in the charity sector. Grandchildren are Ivy Willow (14), Lochan Davy (10), and step granddaughter, Leyla, in her early twenties. As his final stroke of luck, Michael married Mary in 2016 and they live in Leamington Spa.

Books

Michael has written some eight single-authored books of which four represent different themes on which he thinks to have made significant original contributions: D. H. Lawrence: Language and Being (1992), Literature, Modernism and Myth (1997), Sentimentalism, Ethics and the Culture of Feeling (2001), and Open Secrets: Literature, Education and Authority (2007).

In 2008 Michael was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.