Evans, A. J. 1889-1960

Alfred John Evans (1 May 1889 – 18 September 1960) was an English amateur cricketer, soldier and aviator. As a cricketer, he played first-class cricket before the First World War as an all-rounder for Oxford University and Hampshire, and after the war for Kent County Cricket Club, whom he captained in 1927. Evans gained one Test cap in the 1921 Ashes series against Australia. In first-class cricket, he made 90 appearances, scoring nearly 3,500 runs and taking 110 wickets. In his military service, Evans partook in both the First and the Second World War's. Beginning in the Intelligence Corps during the First World War, he later joined the Royal Flying Corps as a reconnaissance pilot, which earned him the Military Cross (MC). After crash landing behind enemy lines on the Western Front, Evans was made a prisoner of war by Germany. A persistent attempter of escapes, he eventually managed to successfully escape to Switzerland and resumed his participation in the war as a bomber pilot in Palestine and the Levant. During a bombing raid, he again crash landed and was taken captive by the Ottoman Turks. After an unsuccessful escape attempt, Evans succeeded for the second time when he bribed an Ottoman doctor to declare him sick and eligible for a prisoner swap. Upon his liberation, he gained a bar to his MC in recognition of his persistent escapes from captivity. During the Second World War, he served in MI9, providing guidelines and advice for the escape of prisoners of war. Later in life he was a noted fiction and non-fiction writer, and a proponent of the Derbyite theory of Shakespeare authorship.