Richard Body
British politician (1927–2018)
Sir Richard Bernard Frank Stewart Body (18 May 1927 – 26 February 2018) was an English politician. He was Conservative Member of Parliament for Billericay from 1955 to 1959, for Holland with Boston from 1966 to 1997, and for Boston and Skegness from 1997 until he stood down at the 2001 general election. He was a long-standing member of the Conservative Monday Club, and came second in its 1972 election for chairman. A prominent eurosceptic, Body also served as president of the Anti-Common Market League.
Family background and early life
Sir Richard was born in Datchet, then in Buckinghamshire, in 1927, the son of Bernard Richard Body and his wife, Daphne (formerly Corbett). His father was from a Berkshire family resident in Shinfield since the 1720s. Through his paternal grandmother, he was a third cousin of theatre director Val May. He attended the Reading School, and later the Inns of Court School of Law. He married the former Marion Graham in 1959, and they had a son and a daughter. Lady Body was a friend and Bletchley Park colleague of Valerie Middleton, the grandmother of Catherine, Princess of Wales.
The public source identifies “Richard Body” as british politician (1927–2018). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Richard, Body and British.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7324235. VIAF identifies the subject as 234449859. The Library of Congress control number is n84174620. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2018, 1955 and 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Body” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.