His public interest journalism included an expose of the thalidomide scandal in Britain, after the morning sickness drug left hundreds of children with birth defects. Those affected later received compensation from drug companies on the back of the campaign he organised. Speaking of his investigative work, Evans told The Independent in 2014: "All I tried to do - all I hoped to do - was to shed a little light. And if that light grew weeds, we'd have to try and pull them up." Born in Manchester in 1928, Evans took his first job in journalism at a local paper at the age of 16, later becoming editor of the Northern Echo in his early thirties. During his time at the paper, it ran a campaign on cervical cancer, which led to the implementation of a national programme to detect the illness. He went on to serve as editor of the Sunday Times for 14 years and then the Times for a year, before resigning from the latter position after clashing with Rupert Murdoch on editorial independence. As well as the paper’s reporting on the thalidomide scandal, Evans’ time at the Sunday Times was also notable for exposing the British intelligence officer Kim Philby as a Soviet spy. Evans moved to the US in the 1980s with his wife Tina Brown, where he founded Conde Nast Traveler magazine and worked as the president and publisher of Random House for much of the 1990s. He was also an author himself, writing books including “The American Century” (1998) and “Do I Make Myself Clear?” (2017), a work on the importance of good writing. Thomson Reuters, the multinational media company, was among those to pay tribute to Evans, writing: “We mourn the loss of Sir Harold Evans, who set the world's gold standard for journalism.” “His 70-year career as an investigative journalist, magazine founder, book publisher and author made him one of the most influential media figures of his generation.”