Notes
His biography on the college website (see references) states: ‘John was born in Chelsea, the youngest child of John Venning and his wife Margaret Beatrice Close-Brooks. He had a brother and two sisters. His father was a solicitor in Grays Inn Square, the son of a solicitor. His mother’s father was a banker in Macclesfield.
He was educated at Winchester and Matriculated in 1936.He married Pamela Aileen Mackintsoh in 1941 at Bedford. They had a son, Mark, the following year. He was a Lieutenant in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry attached to the 1st Battalion the Dorsetshire Regiment when he was killed in Sicily on July 19th 1943. He is buried in the Catania War Cemetery Plot III. K. 35. He is commemorated on a Portland stone tablet on the north wall of St Paul’s Church, Bedford.'