William Charles Cole LVO, DMus, FSA, FRAM, FRCM, FRCO (9 October 1909 in Camberwell, London – 9 May 1997) was an English conductor, composer and organist.
The war years were spent at the Air Ministry, though he continued his choral conducting in his spare time, and in 1945 he succeeded to the Chair of Harmony and Composition at the Royal Academy of Music where he remained until 1962.
While there, he directed the People's Palace Choral Society from 1947 to 1963 and succeeded Vaughan Williams as conductor of the Leith Hill Festival in 1954.
He will, however, be best remembered in musical circles for his work as Master of the Music at the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy from 1954 to 1994; during forty years of sustained work he trained the Savoy choir (the choirboys are also provided by Saint Olave's Grammar School) and composed many pieces for them - a Te Deum, Lord's Prayer and State Prayers (of which copies still exist in his handwriting), not to mention 'A Prelude on While Shepherd's Watched' for organ.
Outside of music, Cole's main interest was stained glass, and largely as a result of his expertise in this field he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA) in 1979.