In Athens, Pendlebury stayed at the British School's student hostel, which also provided lodging for visiting scholars doing research in Greece.

He 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.

The students explored Greece in groups, living an athletic life, in contrast to the sedentary preferences of the scholars.

[12] The students then toured eastern Crete by automobile over muddy dirt roads, and in frequent heavy rain and snow.

Resuming a busy life in Athens, Pendlebury was invited to his first excavation by the Assistant Director of the school, Walter Abel Heurtley, at an ancient Macedonian site near Salonica.

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

Excavations at Amarna had been started 40 years earlier by Flinders Petrie, but were then continuing under the directorship of Hans Frankfort for the Egypt Exploration Society.

In 1930 Payne and Dilys travelled to Crete to survey Eleutherna prior to its excavation, inviting the Pendleburys to accompany them.

[16] Knossos had been donated to the British School in 1924, but Evans retained control for the time being, continuing the restorations, and bringing affairs there to a conclusion.

The donation had not only disposed of the estate, ensuring its continuity, but gave Evans virtual control of the British School as well.

One matter requiring disposition was the retirement of his Director of Excavation, Duncan MacKenzie, now past 65 and in very poor health due to alcoholism, malaria, and the effects of a career of physically demanding work at Knossos.

Shortly afterward an unsigned, confidential telegram arrived asking if Duncan should retire in the autumn of 1929, would he be interested in the Directorship of Knossos?

In the autumn of 1929 Arthur Evans appointed Pendlebury curator of the archaeological site at Knossos to replace MacKenzie.

[18] By the time Pendlebury assumed the curatorship of Knossos, the site was overgrown, animals browsed freely among the ruins, and some buildings were in disrepair.

While Evans refurbished the Taverna, situated on the edge of the Villa Ariadne property, with furniture and rugs, Pendlebury began sorting crates of artefacts from the excavation.

[19] Because of the amount of work, which kept the Pendleburys and Evans busy from dawn until dusk, John welcomed the end of the season in July.

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

He 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.

As assistants in the cataloguing task, he used his wife and two graduate students at the British School, Edith Eccles and Mercy Money-Coutts.

That year also he built a tennis court at the site and added a nursery to the Taverna for his first child, David, born in England.

"These two quotes together comprise an explanation of why Pendlebury, a man of no military experience, chose to leave archaeology at the peak of his career to assume a difficult and dangerous role in the defence of Greece.

Antony Beevor, historian of the Battle of Crete, attributes to Pendlebury the same conventional motive often attributed to British partisans of Hellenic causes starting with the Greek War of Independence in the early 19th century:[31] "Although an archaeologist, and an Old Wykehamist of conventional background, John Pendlebury was a vigorous romantic.

[34] He was appointed British vice-consul at Candia (the Venetian name for Heraklion) in June 1940,[35] but his job title did not hide the nature of his duties.

He immediately set-to working up his outline plans: improving the reconnaissance (routes, hiding places, water sources) and sounding out the local clan chiefs like Antonios Gregorakis and Manolis Badouvas.

Turkey had relinquished control over Crete only 43 years before and these kapetanios would be the key to harnessing the Cretan fighting spirit.

In October, on Italy's attempted invasion of Greece, Pendlebury became liaison officer between British troops and Cretan military authority.

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

The enemy forced an entry into Heraklion but were driven out by regular Greek and British troops and by islanders armed with assorted weapons.

On 21 May 1941, when German troops took over Heraklion, Pendlebury slipped away with his Cretan friends heading for Krousonas, the village of Kapetanios Satanas, which was some 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) to the southwest.

[38] The epitaph "He has outsoared the shadow of our night" is a quotation from the 352nd line of "Adonaïs: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.