Writer
29 December 1927 to 18 April 2023
A Jamaican poet, playwright and screenwriter, who wrote and also rewrote numerous scripts for television and film. While Evan Jones is probably best known for his groundbreaking poem ‘The Song of the Banana Man’ (which was broadcast on the BBC’s Caribbean Voices radio show in 1953), he also wrote the scripts for such films as The Damned (1962), King & Country (1964), Modesty Blaize, Funeral in Berlin (both 1966), Wake in Fright (1971), Escape to Victory (1981) and Kangaroo (1986). His British television credits included The Widows of Jaffa (1957), In a Backward Country (1959), Return to Look Behind (1963), Old Man’s Fancy (1965), Go Tell It on Table Mountain (1967) and The Fight Against Slavery (1975).
Read Evan Jones's Guardian obituary
