Sir Harold Matthew Evans (born 1928) is a British-born journalist and writer. He currently lives in New York City with his wife Tina Brown and their two children.
Harold Matthew Evans was born in 1928 in Manchester, England, where he attended school with Auberon Waugh, who nicknamed him "Poshie" due to the fact that his father was the only one in the school with a car. They would be lifelong friends and rivals.
His career began as a reporter for a weekly newspaper at the age of 16. He began to make a reputation as editor of The Northern Echo , where one of his campaigns resulted in a national programme for the detection of cervical cancer.
Becoming one of Britain’s most respected journalists, Evans was editor of The Sunday Times for 14 years from 1967 to 1981, and 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.
Other influential investigative reports included the expose of the Kim Philby spy scandal and the publication of the diaries of former Labour Minister Richard Crossman, by doing so risking prosecution under the Official Secrets Act by so doing.
When Rupert Murdoch acquired Times Newspapers in 1981, Harold Evans was appointed editor of The Times, although his tenure lasted only a year, as he resigned over policy differences relating to editorial independence.
On leaving The Times, Evans became director of Goldcrest Films and Television , but moved to the USA in 1984, where he taught at Duke University, North Carolina. He was subsequently appointed editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly Press and later would become editorial director of US News and World Report.
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.
His 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, and was adapted as a four-part television miniseries that same year.
Harold Evans was knighted for services to journalism in 2004.
Works
Television programs
Books
- We the People (2005) 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 (designer), 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
- Downing Street Diary: The Macmillan years, 1957-1963 (1981) ISBN 0340258977
- Vickers, Against the Odds, 1956-1977 (1978) ISBN 0340234342
- Editing and Design (1974) ISBN 0434905526
- Handling Newspaper Text (1974) ISBN 0030120411
- News Headlines (1974) ISBN 0030075017
- Newspaper Design (1973) ISBN 0434905542
- Editing and Design: A Five-Volume Manual of English, Typography and Layout (1972) ISBN 043490550X
External links
Last updated: 07-30-2005 17:04:59
