[citation needed] His mother's ancestors included George A. Brandreth, Aaron Ward, and Elkanah Watson, all prominent in New York business and politics.
After a month spent on Paros helping Greek-American friends with the grape-harvest, Andrews arrived in the autumn of 1947 at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
It was a time of civil war, the rate of inflation was high and the Greek people were suffering extreme hardship.
He was unfortunate and suffered from an "obscure nervous disorder", which turned out to be epilepsy, and spent much of his first winter in a miserable draughty room.
His journeys and the people he met are described vividly in The Flight of Ikaros (published 1959, reissued 1969 and 1984), "one of the great and lasting books about Greece.
"[2] As this overlapped with the Greek Civil War and its aftermath, it was a time of mistrust, particularly of foreigners (and especially of one making plans and notes in the hills), but he soon gained the trust of country people on both sides of the conflict.
His time in Greece closed with an ascent of Mount Olympus, described in the book, the first by a westerner since the outbreak of the civil war.
Writings in this period included an essay on Louis MacNeice and a lengthy autobiographical poem published in book form, called First Will and Testament.