Complex sentence: Davenport was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1950, studying Old English under J. R. R. Tolkien and writing Oxford's first thesis on James Joyce.
Split into simpler sentences: Davenport was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1950. He studied Old English under J. R. R. Tolkien and wrote Oxford's first thesis on James Joyce.