William Cory Heward Bell

Lieutenant-Colonel William Cory Heward Bell (25 October 1875 – 6 February 1961) was a British Army officer from Wiltshire who fought in two wars, and then became a Conservative Party politician. He sat in the House of Commons from 1918 to 1923, and then became a local councillor.

Life Born at Seend in Wiltshire, Bell was the oldest of the four recorded children of William Heward Bell (1849–1927) and Hannah Taylor Cory (1850–1942). His younger brother Clive (1881–1964) was an art critic associated with the Bloomsbury Group. The family was raised at Cleeve House, Seend, between Melksham and Devizes,

Bell was educated at Westminster School before training at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. and was promoted to lieutenant on 2 November 1898. Attached to the 87th battery Royal Field Artillery (RFA), he served in the Second Boer War, during which he was promoted to captain on 16 November 1901. Following the end of the war he returned to the United Kingdom on the SS Avoca in September 1902, and was stationed at Newcastle with the battery as part of the 12th Brigade division RFA. He retired from the army in 1911, but rejoined on the outbreak of World War I. He was re-elected in 1922, but at the 1923 election he was defeated by the Liberal Party candidate Eric Macfadyen. He became a Deputy Lieutenant of the county in 1952, and also served as a justice of the peace for Wiltshire.