Harold Evans, in a long life, has done pretty well everything in journalism: reporter, columnist, broadcaster, author, editor of dailies and Sundays and, in the US, of a tabloid. He started at the age of 16 as a reporter in Ashton under Lyne, served in the RAF, and after graduating from Durham University won a scholarship to travel and study in the US. He became assistant editor of the Manchester Evening News, was editor of the Northern Echo for four years, then became editor of The Sunday Times in 1967.
Evans stayed at the helm of the Sunday Times for 14 years, championing the newspaper's campaigning investigative team. In 1981, following Rupert
Murdoch's acquisition of the company, Evans was appointed editor of the
Times; he left the newspaper the following year, citing policy differences
over editorial independence. He gave his account of the fallout in his
bestselling book, Good Times, Bad Times.
In 1984, Evans moved to the US, where he was founding editor of Conde Nast Traveler and then editorial director of US News & World Report, the New York Daily News and the Atlantic Monthly. He was president
of Random House publishing group from 1990-97 and is currently editor at large of The Week magazine and a contributing editor of US News. His histories include The American Century, published in 1998, and a sequel, They Made America, published in 2004.
In 2002, readers of the Press Gazette and the British Journalism Review
voted Evans the greatest newspaper editor of all time; in 2004 he received
a knighthood for services to journalism. He currently lives in New York
with his wife, Tina Brown, former editor of Tatler, Talk, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, and their two children.