My mother, Phyllia Ormrod, grew up among the team of people who helped to excavate the Cretan palace of Knossos under the guidance of the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. She rubbed shoulders with both the refined members of the British archaeological institute and the immensely loyal Cretan workforce.

Phyllia was the youngest of the 10 or more children of Emmanuel Akouminakis, and his wife, Kyria Kalaitxaki; seven children survived into adulthood. Her father had walked barefoot from his village of Anogia to work on the site at Knossos, near Heraklion, the island’s capital. He became Evans’s righthand man and, eventually, the curator of the Minoan museum in Heraklion. A regular visitor to Crete was the author Dilys Powell, whom Phyllia later helped with her book The Villa Ariadne (1973), inspired by the house that Evans built for himself on the site at Knossos.

Phyllia, who has died aged 95, was a bright pupil at her primary school and could have won a place to a high school, but she had to stay at home to help with the chores after her older sister, Maria, became pregnant while still a teenager.

Before long, with her brother, Micky, who was the senior liaison agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the second world war, she was gathering intelligence from the staff of the German headquarteres who had occupied the Villa Ariadne. These were dangerous times, but they were also exciting. She soon made friends with the author and SOE officer Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Phyllia was a young woman when her father was killed by German paratroopers during the battle of Crete in 1941. Ignoring all danger she entered the battle zone, found her father’s body and buried it as best she could.

She was the last surviving member of the Cretan resistance unit that supported the capture by SOE of General Heinrich Kreipe, the German commandant of Crete. She and her first husband, John Houseman, an SOE subaltern, later appeared as themselves in Michael Powell’s film about the exploit, Ill Met by Moonlight (1957).

When she became engaged to John a small adjustment to her date of birth was deemed desirable. Micky, with the help of the obliging passport office in Heraklion, took four years off her age. John and Phyllia were married at the family home near Knossos in 1946.

The couple arrived in Britain the following year. Finding it hard to resume his Oxford degree course after his war experiences, John went into commerce, was convicted for fraud and imprisoned on the Isle of Wight, escaping to join the Foreign Legion. He then deserted and returned himself to prison.

During this time, Phyllia was determined to remain in Britain, living in Finchampstead, Berkshire, where I was born in 1951. John eventually wound up in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where he set up the islands’ first newspaper, the Conch News. My parents divorced in the early 1960s.

Phyllia briefly ran a bubble-gum vending company, before settling down with a former partner in that ill-fated business, Oliver Ormrod, whom she married in 1963.

She was a member of the Special Forces Club, which supports those who have served in the military. She was also a great cook and party-giver.

Oliver died in 1986. Phyllia is survived by me, and by her grandchildren Eva, Anna, Oliver, Lily and Allegra.