General Sir William Gerald Hugh Beach, GBE, KCB, MC (20 May 1923 – 4 September 2019)[2] was a British Army officer who, in retirement, researched and advised on defence policy, arms control and disarmament, with an interest in promoting concerns about ethical issues of peace and war.

[4] Retiring from the army in 1981, Beach served as warden of St. George's House, Windsor Castle from 1981 to 1986, vice-Lord Lieutenant of Greater London from 1981 to 1987, Chief Royal Engineer from 1982 to 1987 and member of the Security Commission from 1982 to 1991.

[5] In the 1990s he was chairman of the governors of Gordon's and Bedales schools, and also chaired the boards of the Church Army and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

[citation needed] Beach was a member of the board or executive committee of: the Council for Christian Approaches to Defence,[6] the Centre for Defence Studies (King's College London), the Verification Technology Information Centre (VERTIC),[7] the International Security Information Service (ISIS),[8] and of the British Pugwash Group.

In 1999 he co-authored, with Nadine Gurr, a book on British nuclear weapons policy[10] and, in 2001, a briefing paper on cluster bombs,[11] In January 2009, The Times newspaper published a joint letter from Field Marshal Lord Bramall, General Lord Ramsbotham and General Beach arguing that the UK government should fund more realistic military needs rather than perpetuate its Trident programme,[12] arguing that: Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently, or are likely to, face — particularly international terrorism; and the more you analyse them the more unusable they appear.Beach died 4 September 2019 at age 96.