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.

Born in 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 near Melksham, a "monstrosity" of a house expanded with a fortune made in the family's coal mines in Merthyr Tydfil. William senior was High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1912, a director of the Great Western Railway and of Nixon's Navigation Company, and a member of Avon Vale Hunt.

Bell was educated at Westminster School before training at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was commissioned in the Royal Horse Artillery in 1895 and served in the Second Boer War. He retired from the army in 1911, but rejoined on the outbreak of World War I. He served in France, where he was mentioned in dispatches and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Croix de Guerre.

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