Sir Harold Evans was a British born journalist, writer, newspaper editor and publisher who was editor of The Sunday Times, served as editor-at-large of The Week Magazine, and contributor to The Guardian and BBC Radio 4. He set the world's gold standard for journalism in the public interest, exposing deadly corporate secrets and the spy scandal of the century. One of Evan’s best-known work, The American Century, won critical acclaim when it was published in 1998. The sequel, They Made America (20... moreSir Harold Evans was a British born journalist, writer, newspaper editor and publisher who was editor of The Sunday Times, served as editor-at-large of The Week Magazine, and contributor to The Guardian and BBC Radio 4. He set the world's gold standard for journalism in the public interest, exposing deadly corporate secrets and the spy scandal of the century. One of Evan’s best-known work, The American Century, won critical acclaim 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. He was knighted for services to journalism in 2004.
Evans rose to prominence as the editor of the British newspaper The Sunday Times, which he oversaw from 1967 to 1981. He led a team of investigative journalists that exposed huge political scandals and other abuses. He left the paper to lead the Times of London after it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch, but was ousted after only a year because of disagreements over editorial independence. In the late 1970s Evans’s reputation was at its height. For a decade, he and the team of talented and aggressive journalists he led at the Sunday Times pulled off one triumph after another. There was the revelation of Kim Philby as the highest-placed traitor in the history of British intelligence. The exposé of the anti-morning sickness drug thalidomide and the successful legal battle, involving two judicial trips to the House of Lords, to win compensation for the children born with its effects. The showing-up as a fraudster of the MP and publisher Robert Maxwell. The publication of Richard Crossman’s diaries. Not to mention a steady quality of journalism of many kinds. He was famously courageous. He was the first editor to ignore a D-notice, the supposedly voluntary “guidance” given by a senior intelligence officer on stories that might breach the Official Secrets Act: Evans considered that this particular notice, issued during the uncovering of the spying activities of Philby who by then had defected to Moscow, was intended to preserve the government from embarrassment, not the nation from danger, and went ahead and printed.
Between 1972 and 1977, while in the thick of the editorial battle he found the time to produce one of the few classic books about journalism, five volumes of Editing and Design, of which at least two, Newsman’s English, on writing for newspapers, and Pictures on a Page, on the choice and use of photographs, are works of rare insight and quality. 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. On leaving The Times, Evans became director of Goldcrest Films and Television.
Evans was born in Newton Heath, Manchester, where he attended Brookdale High School Newton Heath.
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.
Evans became a naturalized United States citizen in 1993. On 13 June 2011 until his death, he as editor-at-large at Reuters. He was survived by Tina and their son, George, and daughter, Isabel, and by his son, Michael, and two daughters, Ruth and Kate, from his first marriage.
