Researching Arthur Evans

He contested the 1922 London County Council election as a Progressive candidate for Lewisham West but was unsuccessful.

He was National Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Leicester East from 1922 to 1923 and Conservative MP for Cardiff South from 1924 to 1929, and from 1931 to 1945. At the 1945 general election he was defeated by the future Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan.

Evans was born at Compton Beauchamp in the English county of Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), on 25 March 1781. His father, the Rev. Lewis Evans, vicar of Froxfield, Wiltshire, was a well-known astronomer, and held for many years the professorship of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He married Ann, eldest daughter of Thomas Norman. The second son, Arthur, received his education at the college school, Gloucester, of which his uncle and namesake was head-master, and here he was known as ‘The Bold Arthur,’ from his remarkable personal courage. He went into residence at St John's College, Oxford, 23 October 1800, and proceeded B.A. 21 February 1804, M.A. 1820, and B.D. and D.D. 1828.

In addition to his knowledge of classical languages, Evans became versed in Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Icelandic. He had musical talent, and was a performer on several instruments. As an artist he sketched in pencil, crayon, and sepia, and his cattle pieces were of eminent merit. He studied geology and botany, and his knowledge of Greek, Roman, and English coins, of which he had a large collection, was considerable.

He was ordained to the curacy of Hartpury, Gloucester, in August 1804, and after receiving priest's orders in September 1805, was in the following month appointed professor of classics and history in the Royal Military College, then lately established at Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and he removed with the college to Sandhurst in October 1812. Resigning this appointment in 1822, he went to Britwell, near Burnham, where he prepared pupils for the universities, and served the curacy of Burnham until 1829, when he accepted the head-mastership of the free grammar school at Market Bosworth, Leicestershire.

Unusually Evans was one of the few headmasters of the Dixie Grammar School to be appointed other than by the local Dixie baronets. The Bishop of Lincoln, John Kaye, appointed Evans since in 1829 the 8th Baronet was only a child of 13. The schools' commissioners reported Evans' tenure as one of the most successful in the school's history.

While resident at the Dixie Grammar School he held successively the curacies of Bosworth, Carlton, and Cadeby between 1829 and 1841. He never derived from his clerical profession more than £100 a year and as a schoolmaster he was eminently successful.

Thousands of young men were incarcerated in Stalag VIIIB, in Lamsdorf, by the Germans during World War II. Evans recounted these experiences both in his book, as well as on his website, Lamsdorf Remembered. The website was created due to public response from the children and grandchildren of former inmates of Stalag VIIIB, the website originally named Lamsdorf Reunited was created to record stories and photographs from that experience. Evans encountered the respected RAF pilot Douglas Bader while at Stalag VIIIB, and talked about his escape attempts in his book. Evans himself is mentioned in a book called POW: Allied Prisoners in Europe, 1939–1945 by Adrian Gilbert who used Sojourn in Silesia for his information. Evans was a member of The National Ex-Prisoner of War Association, whose patron is Dame Vera Lynn, DBE, LLD, M.MUS, and is mentioned in the August 2001 newsletter.

More recently, on his website Lamsdorf Remembered, a half-hour Radio Kent interview with Evans was published, as well as a blog called Letters from Stalag VIIIB, which is made up of Evans' letters home during his four years as a prisoner-of-war. The blog was published as a book in February 2014 by Evans' daughter Kathryn Gower.

Each year, starting in the early 1940s, Evans would refuse to pay some or all of his federal income tax, donating that money (or sometimes double that amount) instead to charity. The Internal Revenue Service would typically then also seize the amount from Evans's bank account so that he would end up losing the money twice. “But that’s all right,” he told a reporter. “My action merely is a protest — I’m motivated to act morally myself. I won’t pay the tax for war voluntarily. This way the responsibility for committing the immoral act is on the government.”

In 1963, Evans was jailed for 90 days for contempt of court when he refused to turn over his financial records to the Internal Revenue Service.

Evans was also active with the American Friends Service Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.