Harold Evans

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Sir Harold Matthew Evans (born June 28 1928) is a British-born journalist and writer who was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. He has written various books on history and journalism. Since 2001, Evans has served as Editor-at-Large of The Week Magazine and since 2005, he has been a contributor to The Huffington Post and BBC Radio 4.

Evans was born in Manchester, where he attended school with Lord Alfred Morris, who nicknamed him "Poshie" due to the fact that he was the only boy in the school whose father - a railway driver - owned an automobile.

His career began as a reporter for a weekly newspaper at the age of 16. After service in the Royal Air Force, he entered Durham University where he graduated with honors in politics and economics and subsequently earned a Master of Arts degree for a thesis on foreign policy. He became an Assistant Editor of the Manchester Evening News and won a Harkness Fellowship in 1956-57 for travel and study in the United States. He began to make a reputation on return from the U.S. when he was appointed Editor of the regional daily The Northern Echo, where one of his campaigns resulted in a national programme for the detection of cervical cancer.

During his fourteen-year tenure as Editor of the Sunday Times, Evans was responsible for that newspaper's crusading style of investigative reporting which brought to public attention many stories and scandals which were officially denied or ignored.

One such report was about the plight of hundreds of British Thalidomide children who had never had any compensation for the severe birth defects some of them had suffered. This turned into an ongoing campaign for the newspaper's Insight investigative team, and Evans himself took on the drug companies responsible for the manufacture of Thalidomide, pursuing them through the English courts and eventually gaining victory in the European Court of Human Rights. As a result, the victims' families won compensation after more than a decade. Moreover, the British Government was compelled to change the law inhibiting reporting of civil cases.

Other influential investigative reports included the exposure of Kim Philby as a Soviet spy and the publication of the diaries of former Labour Minister Richard Crossman, thereby risking prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

When Rupert Murdoch acquired the company in 1981, Evans was appointed Editor of The Times. However, he remained with the paper only a year, resigning over policy differences relating to editorial independence. Evans wrote an account in a book entitled Good Times, Bad Times (1984). On leaving The Times, Evans became director of Goldcrest Films and Television.

In 1984, Evans moved to the United States, where he taught at Duke University. He was subsequently appointed Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic Monthly Press and later became editorial director of US News and World Report In 1986 he was the founding editor of Conde Nast Traveler, dedicated to "truth in travel."

Evans was appointed president and publisher of Random House trade group from 1990 to 1997 and editorial director and vice chairman of US News and World Report, the New York Daily News, and The Atlantic Monthly from 1997 to January 2000, when he resigned to concentrate on writing.

Evans most famous work The American Century won critical accaim when it was published in 1998. They Made America, the sequel published in 2004, described the lives of some of the country's most important inventors and innovators. Fortune magazine identified it as one of the best books in its 75 years of publiction. It was adapted as a four-part television miniseries that same year and as an NPR radio special in 2005.

Evans was knighted for services to journalism in 2004.

He currently lives in New York City with his wife Tina Brown and their two children.

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Works

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Radio and Television programs

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Books

  • We the People (2007) ISBN 0316277177
  • They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine (2004) ISBN 0316277665
  • War Stories: Reporting in the Time of Conflict from the Crimea to Iraq (2003) ISBN 1593730055
  • The BBC Reports: On America, Its Allies and Enemies, and the Counterattack on Terrorism (2002) ISBN 1585672998
  • Best American Magazine Writing 2002 (2002) ISBN 1586481371
  • Shots in the Dark: True Crime Pictures (2001) by Gail Buckland, Harold Evans ISBN 0821227750
  • The Best American Magazine Writing 2001 (2001) Harold Evans (editor) ISBN 158648088X
  • Essential English: For Journalists, Editors and Writers (2000) ISBN 0712664475
  • War of Words: Memoirs of a South African Journalist (2000) by Benjamin Pogrund, Harold Evans ISBN 1888363711
  • The American Century (1998) ISBN 0679410708
  • Pictures on a Page: Photo-Journalism, Graphics and Picture Editing (1997) ISBN 0712673881
  • Eyewitness 2: 3 Decades Through World Press Photos (1992) ISBN 0907621554
  • Makers of Photographic History (1990) ISBN 094848909X
  • Assignments: The Press Photographers' Association Yearbook (Assignments) (1988) by Harold Evans (commentary), Anna Tait (editor) ISBN 0714825018
  • Editing and Design: Book 2: Handling Newspaper Text (1986) ISBN 0434905488
  • Good Times, Bad Times (1984) ISBN 0689114656
  • Front Page History: Events of Our Century That Shook the World (1984) ISBN 0881620513
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External links

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