Early career Evans began his career as a reporter for a weekly newspaper in
Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, at 16. During his
national service in the
Royal Air Force (1946–1949), After studying economics and politics, he graduated in 1952. While at the Darlington title, Evans successfully campaigned for
cervical smear tests to be remedied so that he could be more available for journalistic work, and he campaigned tirelessly to pardon
Timothy Evans, wrongly convicted and hanged for murders in
Notting Hill,
London. He recommended Evans to the board as the next editor of
The Sunday Times. Early on during his period as editor came the title's exposure of
Kim Philby in that year as a member of the
Cambridge Spy ring who had been involved in espionage on behalf of Russia from 1933. Previously it had been claimed that Philby was a low-level diplomat at the time he fled to Moscow in 1963, whereas in actuality, he had been in charge of anti-Soviet intelligence and the chief officer responsible for maintaining contacts with the
CIA. Despite this, he went ahead with publication believing the D-notice had been issued to inoculate the government against bad publicity, rather than to maintain the country's security. Evans 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 in 1979. The British government was compelled to change the law on
contempt of court which had inhibited the reporting of civil cases. While it was legal for the newspaper to campaign, it was not possible for the journalists to report its factual basis. After the ruling in the European Court, the British media was now able to report such cases without restraint.
Murdoch takeover When
Rupert Murdoch acquired
Times Newspapers Limited in 1981, he appointed Evans as editor of
The Times. He remained with the paper only a year, during which time
The Times was critical of
Margaret Thatcher. Over 50 journalists resigned in the first six months of Murdoch's takeover, a number of them known to dislike Evans. In March 1982, a group of
Times journalists called for Evans to resign, despite the paper's increase in circulation, claiming that he had overseen an "erosion of editorial standards". Evans resigned shortly afterwards, citing policy differences with Murdoch relating to
editorial independence. Evans included an account of the episode in his book
Good Times, Bad Times (1984). In the introduction to the 1994 edition, Evans wrote of Murdoch: "When I come across him socially in New York I find I am without any residual emotional hostility ... I have to remind myself ... that
Lucifer is the most arresting character in
Milton's
Paradise Lost." On leaving
The Times, Evans became director of
Goldcrest Films and Television. He acquired rights for $40,000 to the memoir,
Dreams from My Father, by
Barack Obama, then at the start of his political career. His work
The American Century 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 characterised it as one of the best books in the 75 years of that magazine's publication. The book was adapted as a four-part television
mini-series that same year and as a
National Public Radio special in the US in 2005. Evans became a
naturalised United States citizen in 1993. On 13 June 2011, he became
editor-at-large at
Reuters. ==Personal life and death==