One month to go before the release of OB's Jemahl Evans next book The Deceitful Light.
The Last Roundhead was released in August 2015 and nominated by netgalley as one of the UKs top ten books published that month. The second book in the series, This Deceitful Light, will be published in September 2017. Jemahl’s interest in the English Civil War was sparked as a child after reading Simon by Rosemary Sutcliff, which is probably why his sympathies lie with Parliament!
In a time of civil war and betrayal, one drunken fop could be the difference between victory and defeat.
Sir Blandford Candy is an irascible old drunk with a love of hats and an idiot for a nephew. After blackmailing a neighbour, he looks back on his life and adventures during the English Civil War. Young Blandford returns to London after the First Battle of Newbury. He finds a new Lord Mayor in the Guildhall, and a murdered actor in his theatre. Blandford tries to foil a Royalist plot to smuggle gold to Oxford, find a sailor’s lost treasure, and hunt for a book that could change the course of the war.
His search takes him from the streets of London and Southampton to the bloody battlefield of Marston Moor, but only one man can help. A man Blandford has sworn to kill.
Born in Bradford On Avon to nomadic Welsh school teachers; Jemahl was 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, focusing 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.