Silk was born in Eureka, California. His father was a medical missionary on a Native American reservation in the Sierra Nevada desert. Silk's mother, who was Spanish, died when he was five, and the family returned to Britain. Silk was educated at Christ's Hospital, and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he gained an MA in history and represented Cambridge University at cricket. A useful opener or middle-order batsman, he scored centuries in matches against Oxford University in 1953 and 1954, and captained Cambridge University in 1955. He went on to play first-class cricket for Somerset as an amateur during the school summer holidays, but gave priority to his teaching career. His highest first-class score was 126 for Cambridge University against the MCC in 1953. He toured East Africa with the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1957–58, and captained the MCC on tours to South America in 1958–59 and to the US and Canada in 1959 and 1967, none of which included first-class matches. He also captained a strong MCC team on a tour of New Zealand in 1960–61, which included 10 first-class matches, three of them against the full-strength New Zealand team. After the New Zealand tour he retired from first-class cricket at the age of 29. He seldom bowled his leg-breaks, and his single first-class wicket came in his second-to-last match, when he bowled Gerry Alexander in the MCC match against the Governor-General's XI in Auckland. However, on the MCC tour of South America in 1959 he took nine wickets at an average of only 2.11, as well as scoring 457 runs at an average of 76.16. He later wrote two instructional books on playing cricket. He was Chairman of the Test and County Cricket Board from 1994 to 1996, and also served as President of the MCC. He was an Honorary Life Vice-President of the MCC from 2000 onwards. He was made a CBE in the 1995 New Year's Honours List for services to cricket and education.
Teaching
Having taught at Marlborough College, Silk moved on to Radley College, where he was Warden from 1968 to 1991. In this role he appeared prominently in the 1980 BBC documentary series, Public School. Eric Anderson, who headed Shrewsbury and Eton, regarded Silk as the best headmaster of his generation in England, who transformed Radley from what Anderson described as "a pretty ordinary place" to one of England's best public schools. When Silk retired from Radley, rather than accepting any retirement gifts for himself, he established the Dennis Silk Fund to support the education of talented boys whose parents might otherwise have struggled to pay the school's fees. As of 2018, 31 boys had benefited from the fund.
Friendship with Sassoon
During the early 1950s, Silk was introduced to the cricket-loving poet Siegfried Sassoon by a mutual acquaintance, Edmund Blunden. Until Sassoon's death in 1967, Silk was one of his closest friends, and made several unique recordings of the poet reading his own work at Sassoon's home in Heytesbury, Wiltshire. These formed the basis of a BBC Radio 4 programme on the subject: Siegfried Sassoon: a Friend. In 2009, Silk became President for Life of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship. In 2014, Silk and his wife, Diana, appeared on the BBC programme Countryfile in a feature on Sassoon's residence at Heytesbury. The cricket writer David Foot likened Silk to Sassoon, describing him as "a gentle, rounded, civilised man, a scholar without ostentation, literate, a lover of poetry and someone with a similar sense of quiet fun".
Portrait bust
Dennis Silk sat for sculptor and former Radley College pupil Alan Thornhill for a portrait in clay. The correspondence file relating to the Silk portrait bust is held as part of the Thornhill Papers in the archive of the Henry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and the terracotta remains in the collection of the artist.
Personal life
Silk married Diana Milton in Pitminster Church in Somerset in 1963. They had four children. They moved back to Somerset after his retirement. Following his death, a Service of Thanksgiving was held in Southwark Cathedral; 1,200 people were in attendance, with representatives from Radley, Marlborough and the MCC.
Works
Cricket
Attacking Cricket
Siegfried Sassoon
T. E. Lawrence and Siegfried Sassoon: a Friendship
