About Me

More a Clare than a Juliet?

My full name is Juliet Clare Bell but almost everyone calls me Clare.  

Why Clare?         

When my mum was pregnant with me, my parents decided to call me Clare -if I was a girl. And then they saw Romeo and Juliet at the cinema. They were so taken by it, and the beautiful Juliet, that they changed their minds -they would call me Juliet Clare. Shortly afterwards I arrived, long and scrawny, with little tufts of orange hair...

It seems I didn’t look like a Juliet, so they started calling me Clare, although they still put Juliet Clare down on the birth certificate. They say that by the time I was a few months old I looked lovely and ‘just like a Juliet’, but by that time everyone was used to calling me Clare. So Clare stuck. And with a few exceptions, like anything very official, or when stand-in teachers did the register and I became Juliet Bravo for a few weeks by my classmates (Juliet Bravo was a 1980s police drama on the telly, so people thought it was a very funny nickname), I have remained Clare.

So why Juliet Clare Bell now?

I recently discovered that there is already a children's author called Clare Bell. She writes for much older children but it seemed like a good idea to use a different name. And Juliet Clare Bell was the easiest other name for me to remember since I’ve known it all my life.

If we meet, please call me Clare, and never call me Juliet Bravo, or I might have to arrest you.