London (AFP)
Harold Evans, a monster of British journalism best known for leading the editorial staff of The Sunday Times, has died at 92, his wife Tina Brown announced Thursday.
Tributes have poured in after the death, which occurred Wednesday in New York from heart failure, of the journalist-turned-editor in the United States.
British Culture Minister Oliver Dowden hailed a "giant of investigative journalism".
Hailing from a modest family in Manchester, in the north of England, Harold Evans began his career with the local newspaper, the Manchester Evening News.
Managing editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981, he played a key role in the outbreak of the thalidomide scandal, a drug given to pregnant women that caused birth defects.
Under his leadership, the Sunday Newspaper also revealed that British spy Kim Philby was a double agent in the service of the Soviet Union.
He also published excerpts from the memoirs of former Labor minister Richard Crossman that the government wanted to ban, despite the risk of prosecution.
Appointed in 1981 as editor of the daily version of the newspaper, The Times, he stayed there only a year, in conflict with its owner, magnate Rupert Murdoch.
He then accused the latter of having thanked him because of the newspaper's attacks on Margaret Thatcher.
The father of five described journalism as his "passion" and summed up his vision for the profession this way: "trying to get the truth means rejecting stereotypes and clichés".
After leaving the Times, he moved with his second wife Tina Brown to the United States, where he taught and became director of the Random House publishing house.
In the United States, Tina Brown established herself as a well-respected press patron, at the head of Vanity Fair in the 1980s, then of The New Yorker in the 1990s. The couple gained a reputation of great influence in political life. and New York socialite.
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