Julian Heward Bell was born in
St Pancras, London, and was brought up at
Charleston, Sussex. He was educated at
Leighton Park School and
King's College, Cambridge, where he joined the
Cambridge Apostles. He was a friend of some of the
Cambridge Five, including
Anthony Blunt, to whom he lost his virginity. (In the
BBC dramatisation
Cambridge Spies he appears as Blunt's lover and
Guy Burgess's unrequited love interest). After graduating he worked towards a
college fellowship, without success. In 1935 he went to
China, to a position teaching English at
Wuhan University. He wrote letters describing his relationship with a married lover, K. -
Ling Shuhua, the wife of Professor Chen Yuan (better known by his pen-name, Chen Xiying). The identity of 'K' became a sensitive issue when the Chinese-British novelist
Hong Ying published a fictionalised account,
K: The Art of Love in 1999. After a 2002 ruling by a Chinese court, that the book was 'defamation of the dead', the author rewrote the book, which was published in 2003 under the title
The English Lover. Bell was initially a pacifist and edited an anthology of memoirs of
conscientious objectors from the
First World War,
We Did Not Fight. In 1937, Bell became increasingly supportive of the socialist and
anti-fascist movements and decided to enlist in the
Spanish Civil War. His parents and his aunt Virginia tried to dissuade him; eventually, they persuaded Julian to get a job as an
ambulance driver on the Republican side, rather than a soldier. After just a month in Spain he found himself in the thick of the action, driving an ambulance for the British Medical Unit attached to the
International Brigades at the
Battle of Brunete. He was hit by bomb fragments on a stretch of road just outside Villanueva de la Cañada, sustaining a massive lung wound, and later died in a military hospital at
El Escorial. He was 29. ==Works==