1. Nancy Sandars's parents were Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Sandars and Gertrude Sandars.
30 Facts About Nancy Sandars
1. 2.
Nancy Sandars's father was a British Army officer who had served in the Boer War and during the First World War, and her mother served with the Voluntary Aid Detachment.
3.
Nancy Sandars was educated at home by a governess up to the age of twelve.
4.
Nancy Sandars was then educated at Luckley School, then an all-girls independent school in Berkshire, and then at Wychwood School, an all-girls independent school in Oxford.
5.
Nancy Sandars was a sickly child, ill with tuberculosis; this had affected her eyes, but she was successfully treated at a sanatorium in Switzerland.
6.
From 1930 to 1937, Nancy Sandars travelled extensively throughout western Europe: she visited Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Spain.
7.
Nancy Sandars frequently visited "Die Klause", a German language school for British students based in Jugenheim, which had already been attended by Betty, her older sister and Oxford University student.
8.
Nancy Sandars was travelling in Spain in 1936, shortly before the start of the Spanish Civil War.
9.
Nancy Sandars's travels ended in 1936 or 1937, and she established herself in the United Kingdom.
10.
Nancy Sandars took part in her first archaeological excavation in the 1930s after her sister had introduced her to Kathleen Kenyon.
11.
In 1939, Nancy Sandars joined Kenyon to work at her excavation of an Iron Age hill fort at The Wrekin, Shropshire.
12.
Nancy Sandars had been planning to join an excavation in Normandy run by Mortimer Wheeler, but was stopped by the outbreak of World War II.
13.
Nancy Sandars was a good catcher and I don't think there were any casualties.
14.
Nancy Sandars's attitudes changed after experiencing The Blitz, and after the Fall of France in June 1940.
15.
One time, Nancy Sandars crashed into a ditch, having mistaken a T-junction for a crossroads while riding almost blind.
16.
The women riders were not provided with helmets until Nancy Sandars father protested to the Ministry of Home Affairs; they were then swifty issued to all riders.
17.
Nancy Sandars was posted to Abbotscliffe during the D-day landings across the English Channel.
18.
Nancy Sandars ended the war in the rank of petty officer, and was later added to the Bletchley Park Roll of Honour.
19.
Nancy Sandars spent a year at the British School at Athens.
20.
Nancy Sandars then undertook postgraduate research at St Hugh's College, Oxford.
21.
Nancy Sandars worked with Christopher Hawkes, the then Professor of European Prehistory.
22.
Nancy Sandars graduated from the University of Oxford with a Bachelor of Letters degree.
23.
In 1952, Nancy Sandars travelled to Greece to work on an excavation on the island of Chios.
24.
Nancy Sandars had received a grant from St Hugh's College, Oxford to research the European Neolithic.
25.
Nancy Sandars wrote a prose rendition of Epic of Gilgamesh that was published by Penguin Books in 1960.
26.
Nancy Sandars used scholarly translations from the Akkadian by A Heidel and E A Speiser and from the Sumerian by S N Kramer.
27.
Nancy Sandars's version proved very popular and sold over one million copies.
28.
Nancy Sandars continued her travels and research tours across Europe and the Middle East, visiting sites and museums.
29.
Nancy Sandars published Prehistoric Art in Europe in the Pelican History of Art series in 1967, in which she rejected religious interpretations for cave art and championed an approach that instead focused on nature and illusion.
30.
On 2 May 1957, Nancy Sandars was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.