Ernest Bennett (politician)

Sir Ernest Nathaniel Bennett (12 December 1865 – 2 February 1947) was a British academic, politician, explorer and writer.

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). 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 St. Helena in the 1850s. He followed Piers Claughton (the first Bishop of St. Helena) to Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he was Warden of St. Thomas' College and chaplain to the Bishop from 1863–66. 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 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). He published a number of academic studies during this period.

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. 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. The Dervish army suffered around 23,000 casualties compared to only 330 from the British-led force. 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. He exchanged views on this and other matters with Winston Churchill (also present at the battle and who he met on route), and the subsequent books of both authors on the subject of the battle acknowledged the other. 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. 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. Bennett later worked as a press censor for the Turkish Army in Thrace during the Balkan War, and was made a Pasha in reward.

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