Charles Enrique Dent, 25 August 1911 - 19 September 1976

Abstract

Charles Dent was born in Burgos, Spain, on 25 August 1911. His paternal grandfather, who was a Church of England parson in Coverdale, a Cambridge M.A., and reputed to be a good Greek scholar, died under the age of 40. Charles’s father was Dr Frankland Dent, who studied chemistry in Leeds and, as was not unusual before World War I, went afterwards to Munich to acquire a Ph.D. He then joined the Rio Tinto Mining Company and worked in Spain, where he met his wife and married her in 1903. Charles’s mother was Carmen Colsa de Miray Perceval, who came from a well established Spanish family. She had been orphaned early in her life and was educated in a convent. She died in 1976 only a short time before Charles, in her hundredth year. Soon after his marriage, Dr Frankland Dent accepted a post in Singapore, which at that time was part of the Straits Settlement. Dr Frankland Dent was the government chemist and analyst, responsible for a territory which is now Malaysia and Singapore. The two eldest children were born in Singapore, but Charles’s mother decided to return to Spain for the birth of her third child. After about a year in Burgos, the family returned to Singapore and stayed there until the outbreak of war in 1914. Mrs Dent then decided to come to England with her children, but travelling across the Continent at that time was not easy, and the family spent some time near Marseilles before finally settling in Bedford in 1915, where Charles received his early education. He attended Bedford School for a few years where he did well at games, but showed no particular interest in academic subjects. This worried Charles’s father, and a change of school was considered desirable.