Bennett studied at the University of Auckland, where he is described by biographer James McNeish as "poor and deserving"[3] before going on to Merton College, Oxford,[5] where, still indigent, he survived on a diet of Cornish pasties.
The group included John Mulgan, Dan Davin, James Munro Bertram, Desmond Patrick Costello, Charles Brasch, Norman Davis and Ian Milner.
He was editor of the journal Medium Aevum from 1957 to 1981, having earlier assisted his predecessor, Charles Talbut Onions, and was a colleague of C. S. Lewis at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Bennett also edited several volumes, including The Knight's Tale by Chaucer, Early Middle English Verse and Prose (1966, with G. V. Smithers), and the collection Essays on Malory (1963).
[9] He was one of the Inklings, an informal literary group that included two of the most important writers of the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, the authors of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings respectively.