Sir Harold Matthew Evans (born 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 May 2005, Evans has been a contributor to The Huffington Post, and since July 2005, he has been contributing a weekly radio commentary BBC Radio 4.

Evans was born in Manchester, where he attended school with Lord Alfred Morris, who nicknamed him "Poshie" due to the fact that he was the only boy in the school whose father - a railway driver - owned an automobile. His career began as a reporter for a weekly newspaper at the age of 16. After service in the Royal Air Force, he entered Durham University where he graduated with honors 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 1956-7 for travel and study in the United States. He began to make a reputation on 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.

During his fourteen-year tenure as editor of the Sunday Times, Evans 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. Moreover, the British Government was compelled to change the law inhibiting 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 the company 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.

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 later 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 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 and as an NPR radio special in 2005.

Evans was knighted for services to journalism in 2004.

He currently lives in New York City with his wife Tina Brown and their two children.

Credit: en.wikipedia.org