Sir Harold Idris Bell CB OBE (2 October 1879 – 22 January 1967) was a museum curator, a British papyrologist (specialising in Roman Egypt) and a scholar of Welsh literature. Bell was born at Epworth, Lincolnshire to an English father and a Welsh mother. His maternal grandfather, John Hughes of Rhuddlan, was a Welsh speaker. He was educated at Nottingham High School and Oriel College, Oxford. In 1903, he joined the British Museum as an assistant in the Department of Manuscripts and remained there his entire working life, becoming Deputy Keeper of the Department in 1927 and Keeper in 1929. He retired in 1944, and in 1946 he went to live at Aberystwyth, naming his house Bro Gynin, a sign of his respect for the poet Dafydd ap Gwilym.