My Paper Chase
True Stories of Vanished Times: An Autobiography
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
From a wartime beach in Wales to the gleaming skyscrapers of twenty-first-century Manhattan, the extraordinary career of Fleet Street legend Harold Evans has spanned five decades of tumultuous social, political and creative change. Just how did a working class Lancashire boy, who failed the eleven-plus, rise to a position where he could so effectively give voice to the unheard?
Born in the bleak years between the wars in the sprawl of Greater Manchester into a thrifty, diligent and loving family, Evans inherited only the privilege of his parents' example. Theirs was a work ethic that led Evans through night school classes, national service and a passionate commitment to regional life, and, finally, to his unassailably successful editorship of one of our greatest newspapers, the Sunday Times. Whether unpicking the murderous chaos of Bloody Sunday, pursuing a foreign correspondent's murderers or uncovering the atrocity of Thalidomide, this consummate newsman evokes his contagious passion: for the real story and the truth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Old-school newspapering comes alive in this scintillating memoir. Anglo-American journalist Evans (The American Century) reminisces about his rise up the ladder of English newspapers to its pinnacle as editor of the Sunday Times and his late-career hop across the ocean to run Cond Nast Traveler and the publisher Random House. The author depicts British journalism as a more rugged affair than the American version; editor Evans dodges British laws that permit prior restraint of news stories by the government, gets sued by the Irish Republican Army and battles a thuggish printers' union that he hates even more than he does his boss, Rupert Murdoch. America presents its own unique hardships, including protracted discussions with Marlon Brando over acquiring his memoirs, during which the blowsy thespian accuses Evans of being a CIA agent. Evans creates a lively, evocative portrait of 20th-century journalism: the mad deadline pressure of the copy-desk, stocked with Dickensian characters; the epic investigative pieces that make reporting a kind of spy craft; the obsessive pull of editorial crusades against official wrongdoing. Written with self-deprecating humor and quiet conviction, this is a fine valedictory for a heroic style of journalism one hopes still has a future. Photos.
