58 Facts About John Pendlebury

John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury was a British archaeologist who worked for British intelligence during World War II.

John Pendlebury was captured and summarily executed by German troops during the Battle of Crete.

John Pendlebury was born in London, the eldest son of Herbert Stringfellow Pendlebury, a London surgeon, and Lilian Dorothea, a daughter of Sir Thomas Lane Devitt, 1st Baronet, part owner of Devitt and Moore, a shipping company.

John Pendlebury used a glass eye, which, it has been said by people who knew him, was generally mistaken for a real one.

John Pendlebury's mother died when he was 17, leaving him a legacy from his grandfather that made him financially independent.

John Pendlebury remained the centre of his father's affections, whom he called "daddy" in letters.

John Pendlebury was educated at Winchester, before winning scholarships at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

John Pendlebury shone as a sportsman, with an athletics blue and competing internationally as a high jumper.

On leaving university in 1927 John Pendlebury won the Cambridge University Studentship to the British School at Athens.

John Pendlebury soon found the companionship more to his liking.

John Pendlebury hiked the Greek countryside with Sylvia Benton, who had excavated in Ithaca, competing with her to see who could walk the fastest, and became friends with Pierson Dixon, later British ambassador to France.

John Pendlebury struck up a friendship with another archaeology student, Hilda White, 13 years older than he was.

John Pendlebury discovered 10 miles of an ancient road at Mycenae, where he attended a village dance by a bonfire.

John Pendlebury found time to play tennis and hockey, and to form an athletic team for running and jumping.

John Pendlebury first visited Crete in 1928 with the other students.

John Pendlebury wrote a poem about the fleas he encountered while lodging in Sitia.

Later in the year, in more propitious weather, John Pendlebury was invited to stay at the Villa Ariadne with Evans and Duncan Mackenzie.

John Pendlebury reported that Mackenzie confided to Pendlebury in having "my own idea," which he did not tell to Evans.

John Pendlebury's family was at first opposed to the match on the basis of the age difference.

John Pendlebury's studentship ended at the end of 1928; it was replaced by the Macmillan Studentship for another year's study, but only in Greece.

John Pendlebury's retirement was set for the end of 1929, but Pendlebury represented an opportunity Evans could not neglect.

John Pendlebury was looking for a position to begin when his studentship ran out.

John Pendlebury wrote back rejecting the plan, stating that he did not want "an academic life".

John Pendlebury was so ill that he had to be placed in the care of his family, and could not be moved from Athens.

John Pendlebury was not required to assume the post of Knossos Curator until the spring of 1930.

John Pendlebury organised a student hockey match with a team from the Royal Navy.

John Pendlebury was outraged at this first professional critique of his work, claiming he had supported his conclusions fully with data.

Spyridon Marinatos, director of the Museum at Heraklion, wrote a note of protest to John Pendlebury who demanded an investigation.

John Pendlebury planned to add an archaeological library to the villa, now the headquarters of the British School on Crete.

The Pendleburys returned home for a visit, not knowing that, in a single season, John had established a reputation for being a man willing and able to take the responsibility of leadership.

John Pendlebury began work on his Guide to the Stratigraphical Museum.

John Pendlebury brought enthusiasm and colour to the excavation at Amarna, during which a handful of Europeans supervised up to 100 native workers.

John Pendlebury had learned sufficient Arabic to get by from a textbook in 1928.

The living arrangements for the director and other Europeans were not entirely modest; however, John Pendlebury was democratic in his bearing and manner, a policy on which he and Evans had been united.

Just as Evans as a young reporter in the Balkans had purchased formal Turkish garb to wear at social occasions, John Pendlebury purchased formal Cretan garb to wear on similar occasions at Amarna.

John Pendlebury scowls, poking fun, perhaps, at ancient Egyptian statuary.

John Pendlebury impressed the then British directors of Egyptian archaeology to such a degree that at the end of the first season he was offered a permanent post at the Cairo Museum.

John Pendlebury turned it down, reporting privately that he did not wish "a stationary job".

In 1932 John Pendlebury inherited the tedious work of cataloguing about 2000 sherds that had been excavated from Knossos.

Much of the tension between Evans and John Pendlebury came from their disagreement on the nature of the Knossos Guidebook.

John Pendlebury wanted to write the work himself according to his own outline, express his own views fully, have it published under his name, and get paid for it.

John Pendlebury successfully wined, dined and convinced Pendlebury to undertake a compromise work.

John Pendlebury had at last seen Evans' point of view on the restorations.

On complaining to MP, Harold Macmillan, John Pendlebury was told that the MP himself would look into procuring more copies.

John Pendlebury was Director of Excavations at Tell el-Amarna from 1930 to 1936 and continued as Curator at Knossos until 1934.

John Pendlebury had formulated a new plan, to write an archaeological guide to all of Crete.

Hutchinson, later wrote such a guide, which the board did not find objectionable, but in 1934 they wrote to John Pendlebury stating that they had changed the terms of the Curatorship.

Pendlebury was one of the early archaeologists who engaged in environmental reconstruction of the Bronze Age; for example, as C Michael Hogan notes, Pendlebury first deduced that the settlement at Knossos appears to have been overpopulated at its Bronze Age peak based upon deforestation practices.

John Pendlebury spent days above the clouds and walked over 1,000 miles in a single archaeological season.

In July 1939, John Pendlebury reached an intermission of his work in Crete; An Introduction to the Archaeology of Crete was published and work had stopped at the excavation of Karphi.

John Pendlebury had some work he wanted to finish at Cambridge.

John Pendlebury was commissioned on the General List in January 1940.

John Pendlebury was appointed British vice-consul at Candia in June 1940, but his job title did not hide the nature of his duties.

The invasion of Crete began on 20 May 1941, John Pendlebury was in the Heraklion area where it started with heavy bombing followed by troops dropped by parachute.

On 21 May 1941, with German troops attacking Heraklion, John Pendlebury slipped away with his Cretan friends heading for Krousonas, the village of Kapetanios Satanas, which was some 15 kilometres to the southwest.

Some Stukas came over and John Pendlebury was wounded in the chest.

The next day John Pendlebury had been changed into a clean shirt.

John Pendlebury is commemorated on the Trumpington War Memorial and on his wife's headstone in the churchyard at Trumpington, a village on the southern outskirts of Cambridge.