Mary Bennett

Who was Mary Bennett?

Mary Letitia Somerville Bennett was a British academic, best known for her tenure as Principal of St Hilda's College, Oxford between 1965 and 1980.

Mary Bennett was the daughter of historian H. A. L. Fisher, and was educated at Oxford High School. She obtained her first degree from Somerville College, Oxford, and then studied abroad, researching into the grain supply of ancient Rome. During the Second World War she worked for the British Ministry of Information and for the BBC, and after the war went into the Colonial Office with responsibility at various times for Gibraltar, Malta and Cyprus. In 1955, she married senior civil servant John Sloman Bennett, who would be happy to take a back seat when she took over as Principal of St Hilda's from Kathleen Major.

In retirement, she wrote up her researches into family history:

The Ilberts in India, 1882-1886: an Imperial Miniature

Who was Dr Jackson? Two Calcutta Families, 1830-1855

St Hilda's College, Oxford commissioned Jean Cooke to make a portrait of its principal.