Robert Charles Bell


Robert Charles Bell was the author of several books on board games, most importantly Board and Table Games 1 & 2. This work won the Premier Award of the Doctors' Hobbies Exhibition, London. He was instrumental in popularizing traditional games, and is acknowledged as one of 11 "principal sources" in David Parlett's The Oxford History of Board Games.

Life

He was born 1917 in Sudbury, Ontario and moved to England in 1928; and was educated at Haileybury College, Hertfordshire and St Bartholomew's Hospital by 1941. He became a consultant plastic surgeon and was on the editorial board of the British Journal of Plastic Surgery. Outside medicine, Bell was a polymath who became an international authority on board games and wrote books for collectors on Tyneside Pottery and Trade Tokens. His first work on games was Board and Table Games, and he later produced many articles on coin collecting for World Coins.
He died in 2002. As of 2007, much of his extensive collection of games and game paraphernalia resides at the University of Durham.

Categories of board and table games

Bell gives origins, history and some game-playing details for some 180 games in the 2 volumes of his main work. He divides board games into four main categories:
  • A race game requires the pieces to move from a start point to a finish point usually based on the throw of dice.
  • A wargame involves movement and is typically won with the capture of all opponent pieces or a special opponent piece.
  • A positional game requires the winning player to form a pattern or shape by merely placing or placing and moving pieces on a board.
  • Mancala games involve players distributing seeds across a series of holes and collecting the contents of holes that achieve specific numeric or numeric/positional status. Typically one wins by collecting the most seeds, or rendering the opponent unable to move.
Bell used the basic categories suggested by Murray with some alterations. Because his treatment extended beyond board games, Bell also included the categories of dice and domino games; and in his second volume added "Games of Words and Numbers", "Card Games Requiring Boards", and "Games of manual dexterity". In addition, there is mention of the subgenre of solitaire and puzzle games.
Bell drew on a wide range of sources, including Edward Falkener, Stewart Culin, Willard Fiske, H. J. R. Murray, John Scarne, as well as his own research and collection.

Publications

Books about board and table games

Robert Charles Bell MB, FRCS
  • Board And Table Games From Many Civilizations 1 – Oxford University Press, 1960.
  • Board And Table Games From Many Civilizations 2 – Oxford University Press, 1969.
  • Tangram Teasers: A Selection Of Ch'i Ch'iau Puzzles – Corbitt & Hunter, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1965..
  • Discovering Old Board Games – Shire Publications #182, 1973.
  • Discovering Backgammon – Shire Publications #201, 1975.
  • Discovering Mah-Jong – Shire Publications #222, 1976.
  • Discovering Chess – Shire Publications #221, 1976.. A second edition, revised by Ken Whyld, was published in 1979.
  • The Boardgame Book – Bookthrift Company / Marshall Cavendish / Knapp Press / Viking Press / Penguin Books, London, 1979..
  • Discovering Dice And Dominoes - Shire Publications #255, 1980..
  • Oriental Games - Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art / University of Durham, 1981.
  • Board And Table Game Antiques - Shire Publications, 1981..
  • Games to Play: Board And Table Games For All The Family - Michael Joseph / Penguin Group / Guild Publishing, 1988..
  • A Compendium Of Games: Family Entertainment From Around The World – Smithmark Publications, 1999..
Robbie Bell and Michael Cornelius

Other books

R. C. Bell
  • Commercial Coins 1787–1804 – Corbitt & Hunter, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1963.
  • Copper Commercial Coins 1811–1819 – Corbitt & Hunter, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1964.
  • Tradesmen's Tickets And Private Tokens 1785-1819 – Corbitt & Hunter, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1966.
  • Specious Tokens And Those Struck For General Circulation 1784-1804 – Corbitt & Hunter, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1968.
  • Tyneside Pottery - Littlehampton Book Services Ltd, 1971..
  • Monographs On Plastic Surgery, volume 1: The Use Of Skin Grafts – Oxford University Press, 1973.
  • Unofficial Farthings 1820-1870 – B.A. Seaby, London, 1975..
  • The Building Medalets Of Kempson And Skidmore 1796-1797 – Frank Graham, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1978..
  • Maling And Other Tyneside Pottery – Shire Publications, 1986..
  • Political And Commemorative Pieces Simulating Tradesmen's Tokens 1770-1802 - ?, Felixstowe, 1987.
  • Bell's Unofficial Farthings: A Supplement – Whitmore, 1994..
R. C. Bell and M. A. V. Gill
  • Potteries Of Tyneside – Frank Graham, 1973..
R. C. Bell and Simon Rodway
Edited by R. C. Bell

Miscellaneous

  • Token Tales – a series of articles, originally appearing in 'World Coins' in the 1960s and 1970s, republished by the Conder Token Collector's Club from 2003
  • Games of the World – this book, edited by Frederic V. Grunfeld and published by Ballantine Books of New York in 1975, cited R.C. Bell and Léon Vié as Editorial Consultants.