Dr John Fennell was appointed Reader and Head of Department in 1952 upon Janko’s retirement. John had graduated in French and German from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1939, and during World War II served at the Combined Services Interrogation Centre. During this time he taught himself Russian and became a member of the Orthodox Church, subsequently acting as a Liaison Officer with the Russian forces in Austria. After the war, he returned to Cambridge as Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Slavonic Studies, and began work on his doctoral thesis. He was awarded his PhD in 1950.
There were only two or three students when John arrived at The University of Nottingham, and Monica Partridge was the only other member of staff. With the dedication and passion of Monica and John the University was able to offer students a range of courses on Russian language, literature and history from medieval to Soviet times. By the time he left in 1956, the department had increased considerably in size, and several graduates had gone on academic careers themselves.
Invited to contribute to a special edition of Slavonica marking the department’s sixtieth anniversary, Fennell remarked that he remembered it as a happy department: there were some good parties, and at least two excellent plays were staged in Russian.
After four years at the University, he left to take up a lectureship at Oxford, and was subsequently appointed to a professorship of Russian and fellowship at New College in 1967. He retired in 1985 and died in 1992, having established Oxford as a foremost international centre for research into medieval Russia.