Harold Evans

Harold Matthew Evans
Evans in New York City, November 2009
Born	June 28, 1928 (1928-06-28) (age 81) Newton Heath, Manchester, United Kingdom
Education	Durham University
Occupation	Journalist, Editor
Spouse(s)	Tina Brown
Children	George and Izzy
Notable credit(s)	The Sunday Times The Week Magazine The Guardian BBC Radio 4

Sir Harold Matthew Evans (born 28 June 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 Guardian and BBC Radio 4.

Personal life

Evans was born to Welsh parents in Newton Heath, Manchester, where he attended Brookdale High School Newton Heath, school with the future Alfred, Lord Morris of Manchester, who nicknamed him "Poshie" because he was the only boy in the school whose father - a railway driver - owned an automobile.

Early career

His career began as a reporter for a weekly newspaper in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire at 16 years old. After completing his national service in the Royal Air Force, he entered Durham University where he graduated with honours 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 gain a reputation on his 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.

The Sunday Times

During his 14-year tenure as editor of the Sunday Times, Evans was responsible for its 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 severe birth defects some had suffered. This turned into a 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 the 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 Times Newspapers Limited 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.

Move to America

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 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' best-known work, The American Century, won critical accaim when it was published in 1998. The sequel, They Made America (2004), described the lives of some of the country's most important inventors and innovators. Fortune identified it as one of the best books in the 75 years of that magazine's publication. It was adapted as a four-part television mini-series that same year and as a National Public Radio special in the USA in 2005.

Harold Evans became an American citizen in 1993,^[1] and lives in New York with his wife Tina Brown and their two children. He was knighted for services to journalism in 2004.

Works

Radio and Television programs

• BBC Radio 4 - A Point of View 13-week series from July 29, 2005 BBC Magazine article 29 July 2005 BBC audio interview 16 May 2005
• PBS - They Made America official site

Bibliography

• Editing and Design: A Five-Volume Manual of English, Typography and Layout (1972) ISBN 0-434-90550-X
• Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers (1972) ISBN 0-7126-6447-5
• Newspaper Design (1973) ISBN 0-434-90554-2
• Editing and Design (1974) ISBN 0-434-90552-6
• Handling Newspaper Text (1974) ISBN 0-03-012041-1
• News Headlines (1974) ISBN 0-03-007501-7
• Front Page History: Events of Our Century That Shook the World (1984) ISBN 0-88162-051-3
• Good Times, Bad Times (1984) ISBN 0-689-11465-6 Also earlier edition of Good Times, Bad Times. Includes sections of black and white photographic plates, plus a few charts and diagrams in text pages.^[2]
• Editing and Design: Book 2: Handling Newspaper Text (1986) ISBN 0-434-90548-8
• Assignments: The Press Photographers' Association Yearbook (Assignments) (1988) by Harold Evans (commentary), Anna Tait (editor) ISBN 0-7148-2501-8
• Makers of Photographic History (1990) ISBN 0-948489-09-X
• Eyewitness 2: 3 Decades Through World Press Photos (1992) ISBN 0-907621-55-4
• Pictures on a Page: Photo-Journalism, Graphics and Picture Editing (1997) ISBN 0-7126-7388-1
• The American Century (1998) ISBN 0-679-41070-8
• War of Words: Memoirs of a South African Journalist (2000) by Benjamin Pogrund, Harold Evans ISBN 1-888363-71-1
• Shots in the Dark: True Crime Pictures (2001) by Gail Buckland, Harold Evans ISBN 0-8212-2775-0
• The Best American Magazine Writing 2001 (2001) Harold Evans (editor) ISBN 1-58648-088-X
• The BBC Reports: On America, Its Allies and Enemies, and the Counterattack on Terrorism (2002) ISBN 1-58567-299-8
• Best American Magazine Writing 2002 (2002) ISBN 1-58648-137-1
• War Stories: Reporting in the Time of Conflict from the Crimea to Iraq (2003) ISBN 1-59373-005-5
• They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine (2004) ISBN 0-316-27766-5
• We the People (2007) ISBN 0-316-27717-7
• My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times (2009) ISBN 978-0-316-03142-4

Footnotes

External links

• Sir Harold Evans official website
• Sir Harold Evans public profile on Facebook
• Harry Evans at the Huffington Post
• Harold Evans at The Daily Beast
• Harold Evans at the Open Directory Project

Interviews

• Harold Evans: They Made America from Bill Thompson's Eye on Books, audio of Harold Evans interview
• The American Century' from CNN Book News, November 13, 1998, includes audio clips from Harold Evans
• Interview with Evans about The American Century from Booknotes, February 7, 1999
• The American Century transcript of Harold Evans interview from PBS NewsHour, June 8, 1999
• Media Giants: Harry Evans profile on Media Circus, July 2007
• Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers from PBS MediaShift, October 29, 2009, interview includes audio clips