John Dennis

John Dennis (19 June 1931 – 13 April 2020) was an Anglican bishop, who served as Bishop of Knaresborough, and then for ten years as Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. In retirement, he was an honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Winchester. Education Dennis was born to (Hubert) Ronald Dennis (1899–1990) and Evelyn, daughter of Leonard Joseph Neville-Polley, a science tutor and author who wrote a biography of the chemist and physicist John Dalton. His father, Ronald Dennis, was the son of a South Yorkshire coal hewer and served as a platoon commander on the Western Front in World War I. Dennis was evacuated during the war, residing with his paternal grandparents in the mining village of Wales, near Kiveton. After the war, he was educated at Rutlish School, Merton (a state grammar school, where his father taught biology and physics), and St Catharine's College, Cambridge (BA 1954, MA 1959), before studying for ordination at Cuddesdon College, Oxford. At Cambridge, he rowed, which he said "[it was] my passion. I loved it, and I managed to prove myself quite tolerably good."