Sir Ernest Nathaniel Bennett (12 December 1865 – 2 February 1947) was a British academic, politician, explorer and writer.
Lineage Ernest Bennett's grandfather, Thomas Bennett (of Roseacre, Lancashire), was born in 1785 and died in 1868. He married Rachel Diggle in 1812, by whom he had a number of children, three of which obtained scholarships to go on to university from Kirkham Grammar School. They were Peter Bennett (vicar of Forcett, Yorkshire), George Bennett (of whom presently), and Edward Bennett (vicar of Laneham, Nottinghamshire).The History of the Parish of Kirkham, in the County of Lancaster, Fishwick, H. ed., Chetham Society: Historical and Literary Remains connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Cheshire, Vol. 92, 1874, Chapter VIII, The Free Grammar School. George Bennett (1826–1897) was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he received a M.A. degree. Like his two brothers (above), George became a clergyman and was canon of St. Paul's on the island of Saint Helena in the 1850s. He followed Piers Claughton (the first Bishop of Saint Helena) to Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he was Warden of St. Thomas' College and chaplain to the Bishop from 1863 to 1866. Upon his return to the UK, George became Master of Kirby Hill Grammar School (which closed in 1957 and is now owned by the Landmark Trust). He concluded his ecclesiastical career as the Rector of Rede, Suffolk (1885–96). George married Eliza, the daughter of Captain Thomas Fewson of the East India Company, in 1856, by whom he had three children: Mary (eldest), Ernest, and Gertrude.
Ernest Nathaniel Bennett was born in 1865 in Colombo, Sri Lanka.Bennett's year of birth has been incorrectly reported by many other sources as 1868. Hertford College, Oxford records in fact indicate that his year of birth was 1865. His gravestone in Oxford also shows that his year of birth was 1865. His correct date of birth is cited in Oxford Men and their Colleges, 1880–92, Joseph Foster, 2 vols, 1893, James Parker & Co., Oxford.
Academic career Bennett was educated at Durham School and went up to Wadham College, Oxford in 1885. He transferred from Wadham to Hertford College on a five-year scholarship in the same year. Bennett obtained a First in Classical Moderations (the first part of Literae Humanores, or "Greats") in 1887, and a First also in the final exams in 1889. He then studied for a second B.A. degree in Theology, for which he secured another First in the exams in 1890. Bennett was elected a Fellow of Hertford in 1891. He continued to be actively involved in the work of the college, while also lecturing for Wadham, Pembroke and Lincoln colleges, until 1906 when he was elected to Parliament. Bennett remained a non-resident Fellow until 1915, when his marriage required his resignation (many college Fellowships of that era required that holders be unmarried).Hertford College Records. He published a number of academic studies during this period.Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries, Ernest N. Bennett, Rivingtons, London, 1900; and various articles in the Classical Review and Expositor.
War correspondent Bennett served as a war correspondent during the Cretan insurrection in 1897. He was registered with the Turks, but was captured by the Greeks, threatened with execution, and only released on his recognition by a Greek officer who happened to have known him at Oxford.Among the Cretan Insurgents, Ernest N. Bennett, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, February 1898. In 1898, he joined the British expedition to Khartoum led by General Kitchener, again as a war correspondent. He witnessed the Battle of Omdurman, in which an Anglo-Egyptian army of 25,000 defeated some 50,000 Ansar (or Dervish) followers of the Khalifa to the Mahdi. He wrote an article shortly afterwards for the Contemporary Review in which he complained of British atrocities against wounded Dervishes after the battle, which provoked a hostile reaction from patriotic readers in Britain.After Omdurman, E. N. Bennett, Contemporary Review, Vol. 75, 1899. In a letter to his mother in 1899, Winston Churchill commented that this article "which has created such a stir" was "vy [sic] clever" and as far as his experience went "absolutely correct". He added that he intended to confirm the article in his forthcoming book on the Sudan campaign and "print certain excerpts in the appendix" (see Winston S. Churchill, Randolph S. Churchill, Companion Volume 1, Part 2, Heinemann, 1967). By the time of his book's second edition in 1902, however, critical references regarding the conduct of the war had been largely expunged, as Churchill – who was by now in parliament – realized that it was not politically wise to air such views in public. Bennett's own political career meanwhile stalled, and he did not get elected to parliament until 1906. He exchanged views on this and other matters with Winston Churchill (also present at the battle and whom he met en route), and the subsequent books of both authors on the subject of the battle acknowledged the other.The Downfall of the Dervishes, E.N. Bennett, Methuen, London, 1899; The River War, Winston S. Churchill, Longmans, London, 1899. Bennett's book remained on the reading list of schools in the Sudan until the 1960s, as it was considered by teachers there to be the most objective account of the battle available. In 1899 he joined the Voluntary Ambulance Corps in South Africa at the outset of the Boer War, and wrote a book about his experiences.With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train, E. N. Bennett, Swan Sonnenshein, London, 1900. In 1911, Bennett was accredited as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian to cover the Italo-Turkish War in what is now Libya. He was attached to the Turkish Army, and during this time he got to know Kemal Atatürk.With the Turks in Tripoli, Ernest N. Bennett, Methuen, London, 1912. Bennett knew Fethi Okyar, the Turkish Ambassador to London (and a former prime minister). In 1938, when Bennett learned that Okyar was planning to go to Istanbul to attend to the dying Atatürk, he asked him to take a copy of this book and present it to Atatürk as a memento. Okyar was with Atatürk as his end approached in the Dolmabahçe Palace, and he later confided to Bennett that the book was on Atatürk's bedside table when he died. Bennett later worked as a press censor for the Turkish Army in Thrace during the Balkan War, and was made a Pasha in reward.
Military and Red Cross service In 1900 (through 1902), Bennett assumed command (as a Lieutenant) of a platoon of Oxford University Volunteers of the 1st Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in the Orange River Colony during the Boer War. Too old to serve on the front line in the First World War, Bennett was initially a British Red Cross (BRX) Commissioner in Belgium, France and Serbia (1914–15). Bennett sailed for Serbia in January 1915 with Sir Thomas Lipton in the latter's yacht, the Erin, which had been dedicated to the transport of medical personnel and supplies for the BRX, initially to France and subsequently to the Balkans. The BRX Mission was responding to a catastrophic outbreak of typhus which had started in Serbian camps holding Austrian prisoners of war and was spreading rapidly to the Serbian population. Some 150,000 people are believed to have died from typhus during this epidemic, which was so virulent that it interrupted military action in Serbia for nearly six months until it was brought under control. Of the 350 Serbian doctors in the country, more than a third also died of the disease while treating their patients. Bennett (though not medically qualified himself) was put in charge of the second BRX unit (of two units deployed).See Some Recent Experiences in Serbia, E.N. Bennett, Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. 78, July–Dec 1915; The Story of a Red Cross Unit in Serbia, James Berry, J.& A. Churchill, London, 1916; and Typhus fever with particular reference to the Serbian epidemic, Richard P. Strong, et al., Harvard University Press, 1920. The Serbian Commander in Chief Radomir Putnik personally commended Bennett on the conditions in his unit's hospital at the Villa Zlatibor in Vrnjačka Banja, and Bennett was later awarded the Serbian Order of the White Eagle (third class) in recognition of his services. Bennett left Serbia in June 1915, by which time the epidemic had been largely subdued. A few months after this, military activity resumed, the Serbian front collapsed and the hospital was overrun by the Austrians. Bennett later joined the Staff of the 11th Infantry Brigade, British Expeditionary Force, and was then attached to the IX Army Corps H.Q. in 1917, with the rank of Captain. He also worked with the Admiralty Intelligence Division.Admiralty Intelligence resumed contact with Bennett during 1940–41 to tap his intimate knowledge of the geography and topography of the Lofoten Islands, off the north-west coast of Norway above the Arctic Circle. Bennett had spent many summers there on fishing trips before the war, and had written about the islands for the Listener magazine (Life in the Lofoden Islands, Sir Ernest Bennett, The Listener, 23 February 1939). The Royal Navy subsequently launched two successful raids (Operation Claymore and Operation Anklet) on the German-occupied Lofoten Islands in March and December 1941. He concluded his military service, with the British Army of the Rhine HQ, in 1919.
Political career Bennett was elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Woodstock, Oxfordshire, in 1906. He campaigned, inter alia, in favour of women's suffrage. In 1904, he tried (as prospective candidate) to recruit the support of Winston Churchill (a fellow Liberal at the time) for women's suffrage, asking him to speak to the subject in Bicester. Churchill declined the offer.Letter from E. N. Bennett to W. S. Churchill, 21 November 1904, Churchill College Archives, Cambridge University. Bennett lost the Woodstock seat in 1910. In 1916, Bennett left the Liberal Party and joined the Labour Party. He contested a number of seats as a Labour candidate in successive elections, until he finally secured Cardiff Central in 1929. He retained this seat in 1931 and 1935, before retiring from politics in 1945.For more on Bennett's political career and his time as a war correspondent, see Ernest Bennett and War, Roger T. Stearn, Soldiers of the Queen, Issue 105, The Victorian Military Society, June 2001; see also the entry for Ernest Bennett in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, by the same author.