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Evan Jones (writer)

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Evan Jones
BornEvan Gordon Newton Jones
(1927-12-29)29 December 1927
Portland, Colony of Jamaica, British Empire
Died18 April 2023(2023-04-18) (aged 95)
England
OccupationPlaywright, screenwriter, poet
LanguageEnglish
EducationMunro College, Jamaica; Haverford College, Pennsylvania, US
Alma materWadham College, Oxford
GenreTelevision drama, screenplays, poetry
Notable works
Notable awardsMartin Luther King Memorial Prize (1976)
SpouseHonora Furgusson (m. 1956; div. 1963) Joanna Jones[1] (m. c. 1975)
ChildrenMelissa,[1] Sadie[2]

Evan Gordon Newton Jones (29 December 1927 – 18 April 2023) was a Jamaican poet, playwright and screenwriter based in the United Kingdom. He was educated in Jamaica, the United States and England. Jones taught at schools in the United States before moving to England in 1956 and beginning a career as a writer.

Jones wrote the scripts for the feature films King and Country (1964), Modesty Blaise (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Wake in Fright (1971), and several television plays.

Biography

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Early life and education

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Evan Jones was born on 29 December 1927 in Portland, Jamaica, the son of the Hon. Frederick McDonald Jones JP OBE, a wealthy planter and Custos of Portland from 1965 until his death in 1971, and Gladys Jones (née Smith) JP MBE, a Quaker missionary and teacher. He was one of seven children. Jones was named after his great-grandfather, the Rev. Evan Newton Jones, a Welsh clergyman who came to Jamaica in 1842, building Saint Thomas Anglican Church in Manchioneal.[3] His parents were likewise greatly involved in their community: the Jones family's land covered 10,000 acres, employing a great number of local people from villages such as Duckenfeild.[3] His mother also ran Happy Grove Secondary School in Hector's River as both its Secretary of the Board of Governors and, at another time, as Acting Principle.[4][5] Jones's parents instilled in him an early love for poetry and theatre, his father recited poetry constantly as he made the rounds of their estates.[3][6] Gladys Jones wrote and delivered sermons to her congregation; she directed pageants, which his father often acted in.[3]

Jones grew up in rural eastern Jamaica and was educated as a child by a governess.[3] From the age of nine, Jones was educated at the prestigious boarding school Munro College, and at 17 subsequently attended Haverford College in Pennsylvania, majoring in English and Spanish.[3] There he found both academic and athletic success, earning the nickname "the educated toe" and began writing plays, the first of which was Inherit this Land (first performed in Jamaica 1951).[3][6] After graduating from Haverford in 1949, he went to the Gaza Strip in Palestine with the American Friends Service Committee, which organized the refugee camps there under the auspices of the United Nations. His experiences became the basis of his first television screenplay, The Widows of Jaffa.[7] Jones had previously provided similar relief work for the Committee in Mexico and was therefore tasked with overseeing a refugee camp of 30,000 people at Khan Yunis.[3]

Jones went on to attend Wadham College, Oxford, graduating in 1952 with a BA (Bachelor of Arts Honours) degree in English literature.[8] In order to reach England, he and a friend stowed on a banana boat bound for London; from there, he took a taxi to Oxford paid for with money won playing poker during his voyage.[9] At Oxford, Jones was a member of a clique of Rhodes scholars and international students, two of whom were Jamaican: the future editor of The Gleaner, Hector Wynter, and Neville Dawes, a fellow writer.[10] Other members include the American mathematician Robert W. Bass and the filmmaker Christopher Ralling, who latter collaborated with Jones on The Fight Against Slavery.[3] It was in conversation with Dawes, however, that Jones declared his intention to synthesise English and Jamaican literary traditions; the result was his seminal poem "The Song of the Banana Man" which sets patois to English metrical verse.[3][9][10] The poem was broadcast on BBC World Service in 1952 and is frequently cited by other writers, including former poet laureate of Jamaica, Lorna Goodison (notably in the first essay of her collection Redemption Ground),[11] and Raymond Antrobus, who as a child had the poem on his bedroom wall, put there by his Jamaican father.[6][12][13] Other poets who reference the poem as an influence include the 'dub' poets of the 1970s, namely Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mutabaruka and Mikey Smith.[9][10] "The Song of the Banana Man" is taught in schools throughout the Caribbean and published in anthologies worldwide.[14] Another well-known poem by Jones, "Lament of the Banana Man", dates from 1962, the year of Jamaica's independence.[14]

Career

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After leaving Oxford, Jones was engaged to work at the Campbell Soup Company by friends in the US. Upon arriving in Philidelphia, he found that a policy decision that had impelled the company to hire non-white persons has been reversed and that his offer of a job has been rescinded.[3] He then worked at a bubblegum factory before teaching at Quaker schools such as The Putney School in Vermont, George School in Pennsylvania and Wesleyan University, Connecticut. In 1956, Jones married the American actress Honora Fergusson in J. Robert Oppenheimer's garden.[10] Jones was a student of her father, the literary critic and Dante scholar Francis Fergusson, who was a close friend of Oppenheimer's since they met at Harvard University. They divorced by mutual consent in 1963.

In 1956, he settled in England and earned his living as a writer of documentary drama, television plays and feature films. Jones also wrote biographies, and textbooks and novels for children.[15] His works include the television documentary series The Fight Against Slavery (1975) which won him the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize in 1976, and several films directed by Joseph Losey during his time as a blacklisted person, including Eva (a collaboration with Hugo Butler, 1962), King and Country (1964) and Modesty Blaise (1966). Other screenplays by Jones include Funeral in Berlin (1966), Escape to Victory (1981) and A Show of Force (1990). He is also notable as the author of Madhouse on Castle Street (1963), a now lost BBC television play, which featured the acting début of Bob Dylan.[16][17]

His wife, Joanna (née Napper), was an actress and his daughters Melissa and Sadie are both novelists.[1][2][18] Evan Jones died on 18 April 2023, at the age of 95.[19][20]

The Bodleian Library holds a collection of documents from Jones's life, including drafts of scripts.[21][22]

Works

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Theatre

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  • Inherit this Land (Little Theatre Movement of Jamaica, 1951)
  • Bend Sinister (unproduced, 1956)
  • In a Backward Country (Guildford Theatre Company, 1962)
  • Go Tell it on Table Mountain (Jamaican Theatre Company, Richmond Fringe Festival, 1970)
  • The Spectators (Guyana, 1972)

Television

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Films

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Books

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  • Protector of the Indians, Nelson, 1958
  • Tales of the Caribbean: Anansi Stories, Ginn, 1984
  • Tales of the Caribbean: Witches and Duppies, Ginn, 1984
  • Tales of the Caribbean: The Beginning of Things, Ginn, 1984
  • Skylarking, Longman, 1993
  • Stonehaven, Institute of Jamaica Publications, 1993
  • Alonso and the Drug Barron, Macmillian Caribbean, 2006
  • A Poem For Every Day of the Year, Allie Esiri, Pan Macmillan, 2017

Poetry

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  • "Genesis" (n.d.)
  • "Walking with R.B." (n.d.)
  • "November, 1956" (n.d.)
  • "The Song of the Banana Man" (1956)
  • "Lament of the Banana Man" (1962)

References

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  1. ^ a b c Roberts, Alison (16 June 2008). "Keeping up with Mrs Jones". The Evening Standard, archived at LexisNexis. London: Associated Newspapers. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  2. ^ a b Kyte, Holly (13 May 2008). "Sadie Jones: 'It just wouldn't leave me alone'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Tanna, Laura (1985). "Evan Jones: Man of Two Worlds". Jamaica Journal. 18 (4): 38–45. ISSN 0021-4124. LCCN 75027862. OCLC 01797964 – via Digital Library of the Caribean.
  4. ^ Hubben, William (21 February 1959). "Religious Education Issue" (PDF). Friends Journal: A Quaker Weekly. 5 (8): 124 – via Friends Journal.
  5. ^ "Kingston Gleaner Newspaper Archives, Jun 19, 1959, p. 22". NewspaperArchive.com. 19 June 1959. Retrieved 27 January 2025.
  6. ^ a b c "Evan Jones obituary". www.thetimes.com. 1 June 2023. Retrieved 27 January 2025.
  7. ^ Hellfire Hall (14 September 2018). "REVIEW: The Widows of Jaffa". The Official Peter Wyngarde Appreciation Society. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  8. ^ Southwood-Smith, Donna. "Language as a vehicle for National Themes" (PDF). Washington Research Library Consortium. p. 10. Retrieved 12 December 2009.[permanent dead link‍]
  9. ^ a b c Thomson, Ian (2009). The Dead Yard: A Story of Modern Jamaica. New York: Nation Books (published 29 March 2011). pp. 160–161. ISBN 978-1-56858-656-4.
  10. ^ a b c d Katz, David (5 June 2023). "Evan Jones obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 27 January 2025.
  11. ^ Goodison, Lorna (2018). "'The song of the Banana Man' and 'The Fiddler Dooney'". Redemption Ground: Essays and Adventures. Myriad Editions. pp. 1–7.
  12. ^ Sethi, Anita (28 December 2019). "Interview | Raymond Antrobus: 'In some ways, poetry is my first language'". The Guardian.
  13. ^ "Raymond Antrobus – The Stories We Tell". arvon.org. Arvon. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  14. ^ a b Creighton, Al (16 August 2020). "In tribute to Jamaica". Stabroek News.
  15. ^ "Evan Jones". Heinemann Books. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  16. ^ "Dylan in the Madhouse". BBC Four. 18 October 2007. Retrieved 2 June 2021.
  17. ^ Llewellyn Smith, Caspar (18 September 2005). "Flash-back". The Observer.
  18. ^ "Melissa Jones". Tantor Media.
  19. ^ "Evan Jones death notice". The Times. 22 April 2023. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
  20. ^ "Evan Jones, writer of Funeral in Berlin and Escape to Victory who also worked with Bob Dylan – obituary". The Telegraph. 30 June 2023.
  21. ^ "New Catalogue: Evan Jones Archive". Archives and Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. 12 January 2016. Retrieved 5 January 2022.
  22. ^ "Collection: Evan Jones Archive | Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts". archives.bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 5 January 2022.
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