Bennett, Jack Arthur Walter (1911-1981), literary scholar and Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge

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Bennett, Jack Arthur Walter (1911-1981), literary scholar and Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge

28 February 1911 – 29 January 1981

Born at Mount Eden, Auckland, New Zealand, the eldest son of Ernest Bennett, a foreman for a shoe manufacturer, and Alexandra, née Corrall, both born in Leicester, England.

School - Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland, New Zealand. He notably wrote the Mount Albert Grammar School hymn, which is sung at school assemblies to this day.

Studied at the University of Auckland before going on to Merton College, Oxford.

Part of a loose kit group of extraordinarily gifted young men from New Zealand who studied at Oxford University before the Second World War. The link between them was to endure for the rest of their lives.

During the Second World War he worked with the British Information Service in America.

He became best known as a scholar of Middle English literature. He was editor of the journal Medium Aevum from 1957 to 1981 and was a colleague of C. S. Lewis at Magdalen College, Oxford.

1964 - he succeeded Lewis as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University.

He was one of the Inklings, an informal literary group that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

He was made a Fellow of Magdalene College Cambridge.