Researching Harold Evans

In 1984 he and his wife Tina Brown moved to the United States where he became an American citizen, retaining dual nationality. He held positions in journalism with U.S. News & World Report, The Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Daily News. In 1986, he founded Condé Nast Traveler. He wrote various books on history and journalism, such as The American Century (1998). In 2000, he retired from positions in journalism to spend more time on his writing. From 2001, he served as editor-at-large of The Week magazine and, from 2005, he was a contributor to The Guardian and BBC Radio 4. Evans was invested as a Knight Bachelor in 2004, for services to journalism. On 13 June 2011, Evans was appointed editor-at-large of the Reuters news agency. From 2013 until 2019, he served as chairman of the European Press Prize jury panel.

Evans was born in 1886 in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Jonathan and Rachel Reeve (Cope) Evans. He married Sylvia Hathaway (d. 1968) on May 1, 1914; the couple had six children. A graduate of Haverford College (1907) and of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (1910), Evans was long associated with the American Friends Service Committee. He was co-counsel before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1943 on behalf of Gordon Hirabayashi, in Hirabayashi v. United States, one of the test cases challenging the curfew and internment laws imposed on Japanese residents of the U.S. and Japanese-Americans in the Western states during World War II. The Supreme Court ruled against Evans's arguments, in a decision which is now considered one of the Court's most disreputable.

Evans received honorary doctorates from Wilmington and Haverford Colleges in 1964 and 1968, respectively. He was active in Friends education, and a long-time member (1943-1967, thereafter emeritus) of Haverford's Board of Managers.