1642: England has been plunged into a Civil War. Blandford Candy is sent to London, after an illicit affair, and joins the Roundhead army to fight against the King, taking part in the Battle of Edgehill. A reluctant hero if ever there was one, he becomes a spy for the cause - and, through luck or judgement, uncovers more than one Royalist plot. His love of wine and the fairer sex prove both a curse
and a blessing for the agent.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Is that it?’ asked Chuckles.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is that it; what happened next? What about all the Roundheads and Cavaliers? The King comes back and they all party?’
‘Well,’ I said, and then stopped myself, realising just how big the question really was and that it was a blatant attempt to avoid written work. But, it was last lesson on a Friday; it had been a very long week, and I had detention for my year group when the lesson finished.
‘Is that it?’ asked Chuckles.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is that it; what happened next? What about all the Roundheads and Cavaliers? The King comes back and they all party?’
‘Well,’ I said, and then stopped myself, realising just how big the question really was and that it was a blatant attempt to avoid written work. But, it was last lesson on a Friday; it had been a very long week, and I had detention for my year group when the lesson finished.
How do you explain in a lesson the long shadow the Civil War cast, the Wars with France, the Glorious Revolution, the American colonies, the slave trade, pirates, The Enlightenment, theatre and literature, Isaac Newton, Whigs and Tories, the birth of modern Britain in 40 minutes flat?
So, I told them the story of William Hiseland - the last cavalier. Hiseland had been born in 1620, fought for the King at Edgehill, and followed the colours for the next seventy years fighting under Marlborough at Malplaquet in 1709, became one of the first Chelsea Pensioners, and married at the grand old age of 100, only dying in 1733. Look him up, he had an amazing life!
William Hiseland (Wikimedia Commons)
As my class filed out, Chuckles chuckling happily (without realising I had just delivered one of my better off-the-cuff lessons), I started thinking about the last roundheads. The men who fought under Cromwell faced an uncertain life after the restoration. It was those men that fascinated me: the men who had won and then lost everything.
In 2010, I came home to Wales when my father died and my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Teaching part-time and caring for Mum gave me time to start scribbling things down. In the summer of 2013, I began trying to put my first novel together from all those scribbles written in hospital waiting rooms.
All of the books in the main series take the form of a Georgian Apologia by an unreliable, and irascible, narrator out to clear his rather sullied reputation. An anti-Hiseland, if you will.
The power of the written word during the period really influenced me, newsbooks, letters, journals, memoirs - people wrote about everything, all the time. I think in our modern world of the internet, TV, film, radio, pro sports etc, it is very easy to forget just how important poetry, the theatre and the bible were to ordinary people.
The Seventeenth Century was highly literate and the printing press really was a contemporary information superhighway. It meant lots of literary references that would be natural to someone born in the period, and language style that mimics the period vernacular. There is some language that could be described as a bit fruity, but all of it comes from period letters and poems. When you quote the Earl of Rochester that can happen! Like writers in the Seventeenth Century, the books are filled with allusions and jokes.
I wanted it to be as an authentic a voice from the past as a modern writer could muster, whilst also keeping it accessible to a reader. The books are also full of self referential fictional meta-fiction – which is a incredibly long winded way of saying lots of Easter eggs.
The Last Roundhead was first published in August 2015 with good reviews in The Times and from the Historical Novel Society. I followed that with three more in the series (all available from Sharpe Books) and there are many more planned.
The series has taken Blandford across England and Europe, and the last episode – The Emerald Cross – saw him decamp to the nascent American colonies on an ‘Boys Own’ treasure hunt. It was left on a bit of a cliff-hanger, and I have had some emails asking me about the next one which is certainly overdue. My current wip is Blandford related, he’s the narrator, but it’s not part of the actual series, and I hope to get that finished before the end of the year before getting on with Blandford 5.
Writing has been very much on the backburner for the last eighteen months as Mum’s breast cancer returned. Fortunately she is now on the mend, and much like in 2013 I have a lot of words written to edit.
Jemahl Evans
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About the Author
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Jemahl Evans was born in Bradford Upon Avon to nomadic Welsh school teachers, and brought up in a West Wales mining village during the 70s and 80s. He has pursued a lifelong passion for History, inspired by his grandfather’s stories and legends. Jemahl was educated in Christ College Brecon, St Mary’s University College (Strawberry Hill), and U.W.E. Bristol. Jemahl graduated with an MA in History, focussing on poetry and propaganda during the Wars of the Roses, and then worked for IBM in London. At the turn of the millennium, he left the grind of the office and spent a couple of years travelling and working abroad. After time spent in India, Australia, and South East Asia he returned to Britain and took up a teaching post in West London in 2005. He left his role as Head of Year in the Heathland School in 2010, and returned to Wales citing hiraeth. Jemahl now spends his time teaching, reading history, listening to the Delta Blues, and walking his border collie. Find out more from his website http://jemahlevans.wix.com You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter @Temulkar
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