Ian Bell was a Scottish journalist who was born and raised in Edinburgh and educated at Edinburgh University. He was an advocate of Scottish independence.

He was the literary editor of The Scotsman before becoming Scottish editor of The Observer. He also wrote for The Herald, The Sunday Herald, The Scotsman, the Daily Record, the Irish Times, and The Times Literary Supplement. He won the Orwell Prize for political journalism in 1997 and was named columnist of the year at the Scottish Press Awards 2012.

Bell wrote two volumes of a biography of Bob Dylan and one of Robert Louis Stevenson, Dreams of Exile, which the Saltire Society awarded Best First Book in 1994.