The Rash Adventurer: A Life of John Pendlebury - Tapa dura

Grundon has produced a remarkable biography, imbued with the spirit of place as well as the ghost of this memorable hero.-Anthony Beevor

John Pendlebury (1904-41), the 'Cretan Lawrence', was shot in the first days of the German occupation of Crete while organising bands of guerrillas to fight the invaders. Not a professional soldier, Pendlebury was chosen for the task because of his intimate knowledge of Crete, its people and language, acquired through his years of archaeological experience on the island. As Curator at Knossos, successor to Sir Arthur Evans, his athleticism and taste for adventure had taken him all over the island in search of ancient sites. Pendlebury's passion for the ancient world also led him to Egypt, where he was Director of the excavations at Tell el-Amarna, city of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten and his queen, Nefertiti. At Cambridge in the mid 1920s he won a Blue for athletics, competing with contemporaries such as Lord Burghley, and a first class degree in Classics and Archaeology.In this, the first biography of John Pendlebury, Imogen Grundon constructs a vivid picture of a brilliant and charismatic scholar-hero, whose life was lived, and ultimately lost, by an ideal of romantic chivalry.