Letter from “your loving Husband” to “My own darling” [John Pendlebury to Hilda Pendlebury] from Knossos

Department Archive
Collection John Pendlebury Family Papers
Reference No. PEN 1/2/1/2/8
Level Item
Dates Thursday, April 27, 1939
Donor/Creator Pendlebury, Dr John Devitt Stringfellow
Scope and Content Telling Hilda he had just got her letter from Hunstanton and she shouldn’t worry because if war did start then John would be in the best place, and if it didn’t then the excavation would continue as normal; informing her that he had answered Fairman [?] and that he would be “inclined to strangle the Sheikh’s wife over the nurse question”; sending Hilda an extract of a conversation at Mycenae which had taken place between the Italian ambassador, Helen and Orestes about an apple; updating her on archaeological work (sorting out finds from Karphi, Mercy [Money-Coutts] finishing drawing the corpus, Zakhary working at the museum); apologising for a “Caldy-Malvern misunderstanding” and mentioning that Robin [Mabel Dickinson’s son] was accommodating refugees and the house at Malvern was going to be closed up because of [Herbert] Pendlebury’s work in London; mentioning that he was writing a “rather good article” on Cretan topography for the Johnny Myers Festschrift; and saying that it was nice to have a letter from David “but don’t force it”. Also includes news that Little Sphakianakes (the school master) had left [Knossos], that George [Markogiannakis] had pneumonia, that John had arranged for an inscription on a pentelic marble slab for the fountain at Vitsilovrysi, that Kosta Kourales (who had been to Mount Ida with them) had died, and that [the excavations in Crete] had been given £25 more funding from the British School and £10 from London University.