My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times

by Harold Evans

Overview

A vivid and whip-smart memoir from the legendary editor who spent decades leading newspapers in London and New York. 

In My Paper Chase, Harold Evans recounts the wild and wonderful tale of newspapering life. His story stretches from the 1930s to his service in WWII, through towns big and off the map. He discusses his passion for the crusading style of reportage he championed, his clashes with Rupert Murdoch, and his struggle to use journalism to better the lives of those less fortunate. There's a star-studded cast and a tremendously vivid sense of what once was: the lead type, the smell of the presses, eccentrics throughout, and angry editors screaming over the intercoms. My Paper Chase tells the story of Evans's great loves: newspapers and Tina Brown, the bright, young journalist who became his wife.

In an age when newspapers everywhere are under threat, My Paper Chase is not just a glorious recounting of an amazing life, but a nostalgic journey in black and white.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316092074
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	11/05/2009
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Harold Evans (1928-2020) was a British-born journalist and writer who was editor of the Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. A graduate of Durham University, he wrote a number of bestselling histories. He followed the late Alistair Cooke in commentaries on America for the BBC. An American citizen after 1993, he held positions as editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly Press, founding editor of the prize-winning Condé Nast Traveler; editorial director of the Atlantic and US News and the New York Daily News; and president and publisher of Random House.

He held the British Press Awards' Gold Award for Lifetime Achievement of Journalists. In 2001 British journalists voted him the all-time greatest British newspaper editor, and in 2004 he was knighted. 

Table of Contents

Book 1 Vanished Times

1 Grains of Truth 3

2 Getting Up Steam 12

3 First, Know Your Enemy 40

4 Hot Metal 72

5 How I Won the War 100

6 Non Nobis Solum 112

7 The Sting of Disraeli's Gibe 122

8 Stop Press 138

9 Why Aren't Their Women Wearing Our Frocks? 166

10 Adventures in the Land of Opportunity 192

11 From Delhi to Darlington 235

12 Just Causes 263

Book 2 Scoop, Scandal, and Strife

13 The Rolls-Royce of Fleet Street 301

14 The Third Man 323

15 Children on Our Conscience 353

16 Space Barons 385

17 Death in Cairo 413

18 Divided Loyalties 445

19 Showdowns 482

20 My Newfoundland 507

Acknowledgments 545

Principal Sunday Times Books 553

Bibliography 557

Index 565

What People are Saying About This

Simon Winchester

Not only is [My Paper Chase] a loving homage to the joys of old-fashioned British newspapering, but it has allowed Mr. Evans to tell at proper length stories that should now be taught as classics in journalism schools worldwide.

— New York Times

Editorial Reviews

Not only is it a loving homage to the joys of old-fashioned British newspapering, but it has also allowed Mr. Evans to tell at proper length stories that should now be taught as classics in journalism schools worldwide…Mr. Evans tells these stories well—on occasion with rather more detail than American readers might care for—but displaying all the while the rambunctious, anti-establishment, North Country willfulness for which Britain still fondly remembers him.
—The New York Times

Simon Winchester

Sir Harold Evans knows his way around a story, having served as the editor of The Sunday Times of London, The Times of London, and all manner of publications up and down the food chain. As the title of his new book, My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times, suggests, he describes an epoch past, an era in British journalism when type was poured hot, articles deemed unfit landed on an actual spike, and the men—and it was mostly men—who commanded all of it were literate buccaneers. If all that sounds a bit silly, a gaslight waltz of serious men in eyeshades that has nothing to do with how journalism evolved, then My Paper Chase will leave you hopelessly, relentlessly bored. But do not confuse the modern newsroom (a generally quiet place that could be part of an insurance company) with the newsrooms of old—palpable theaters of language and ideas. The book is a fight song that revels in the music of those times past.
—The New York Times Book Review

David Carr

In this readable, almost wistful memoir, Sir Harold Evans remains the rare self-made Englishman who changed British journalism.
—The Washington Post

Leonard Downie Jr.

Evocative and enjoyable...Evans has a young man's perennial ¬enthusiasm: he is 81 going on 18. Reading his autobiography, one quickly grasps how he became the most successful editor of his generation. He exudes a combination of boundless enthusiasm, relentless energy and an almost childlike delight in the sheer ¬wonderfulness of newspapers. How can they not survive? ...one feels the warmth of his sunny personality even as the lights seem to be going out in much of print journalism. He saw the best of it - o, lucky man!
—Robert Harris )

The Times

The autobiography of Harold Evans, Britain's greatest post-war editor...is a series of dramatically crafted stories recalled from the highest newspaper perch of all...This is Evans at his storytelling best.
—Peter Stothard

Times Literary Supplement

Journalists' memoirs tend to be as transitory as the great stories they so lovingly recall....Few of them impart much of value, except perhaps for a fleeting sense of nostalgia...Harold Evans must surely be counted an exception, because, for more than a decade, he ran the best newspaper in the world. The Sunday Times, in the 1970s, was good because it placed journalism at the heart of the paper, and allowed it free rein...The stories for which Evans and his papers were once celebrated have long faded. But there is nothing ephemeral about the journalistic standards which he embraced. His may have been the hot metal era, but its lessons remain as important for the bloggers of today as they were for the reporters of his time. Those of us who were there were proud to be part of it.
—Magnus LInklater

The Spectator

One of the great editors of our era chronicles his life in news reporting and book publishing. As editor of the London Sunday Times and The Times, and later as president and publisher of Random House, Evans (War Stories: Reporting in the Time of Conflict from the Crimea to Iraq, 2003, etc.) not only told the stories that changed the social and political world, he often was part of them. He began life as the son of working-class parents in 1930s Manchester, England. Early on he became aware of two things: the seemingly magical way in which newspapers would deliver a torrent of information, and the demarcations of success that were "ordained by the hierarchies of class." Yet rise Evans did. The author is at his best recounting daily life in war-torn England and his early efforts to become a newspaper man. He lovingly describes the smells ("lead, antimony, and tin . . . hot metal marinated with printer's ink" in the typesetting room) and noise (a cacophony of manual typewriters and animated phone calls) of his chosen profession. More important, Evans presents a narrative of stories and their consequences: the failure of the British health system to provide women with simple screening for cervical cancer; the official ignorance of the pollution that was literally choking the life out of Northern England; the willful failure to recognize and act on the struggles of children born without limbs after their mothers took Thalidomide. In these and many other cases, Evans exposed the "vast official carelessness" that permeated British political life. Of his life in America, which began in the '80s, Evans says relatively little, outside of a few anecdotes of signing book contracts withsuch luminaries as Marlon Brando, Richard Nixon and a then-unknown politician, Barack Obama. A second volume, covering these years, would be most welcome. Despite the title, Evans's memoir is more than relevant in the age of computer news; good reporting still demands what Evans exemplifies here-honesty, courage and dogged determination. Agent: Ed Victor/Ed Victor Ltd.

Kirkus Reviews

PRAISE FOR MY PAPER CHASE:


"My Paper Chase is a fight song that revels in the music of times past...It celebrates bygone glories and dwells on the truths of good journalism that still obtain."—David Carr, New York Times Book Review

"Not only is My Paper Chase a loving homage to the joys of old-fashioned British newspapering but it has allowed Mr. Evans to tell at proper length stories that should now be taught as classics in journalism schools worldwide."—Simon Winchester, New York Times

"A refreshing memoir...Evans jettisons hand-wringing over the 'vanished' times of its melencholy subtitle for one man's unquenchable enthusiasm for his life's work...My Paper Chase is the Gospel of Evans, and the gospel makes juicy copy."—Justin Moyer, Christian Science Monitor

"Old school newspapering comes alive in this scintillating memoir. Evan's creates a lively, evocative portrait of 20th-century journalism...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."—Publishers Weekly

"Engaging...in this readable, almost wistful memoir, Sir Harold Evans remains the rare self-made Englishman who changed British journalism."—Leonard Downie Jr., The Washington Post

"Amid pervasive gloom surrounding the future of newspapers, Harold Evans has produced a memoir to lift the spirits."—Financial Times

From the Publisher

"Amid pervasive gloom surrounding the future of newspapers, Harold Evans has produced a memoir to lift the spirits."

Financial Times

"Engaging...in this readable, almost wistful memoir, Sir Harold Evans remains the rare self-made Englishman who changed British journalism."

Leonard Downie Jr. - The Washington Post

"A refreshing memoir...Evans jettisons hand-wringing over the 'vanished' times of its melencholy subtitle for one man's unquenchable enthusiasm for his life's work...My Paper Chase is the Gospel of Evans, and the gospel makes juicy copy."

Justin Moyer - Christian Science Monitor

"Not only is My Paper Chase a loving homage to the joys of old-fashioned British newspapering but it has allowed Mr. Evans to tell at proper length stories that should now be taught as classics in journalism schools worldwide."

Simon Winchester - New York Times

PRAISE FOR MY PAPER CHASE:

"My Paper Chase is a fight song that revels in the music of times past...It celebrates bygone glories and dwells on the truths of good journalism that still obtain."

David Carr - New York Times Book Review

"Like many others I was lucky to have worked with him. His book is illuminating and entertaining on his personal history and it gives a valuable record of what used to be known as English provincial life; more vital then, perhaps than now. But the important reason to read it is that it tells you how good newspapers were once made and why they still matter."

Ian Jack - The Guardian

"SIR Harold "Harry" Evans remains one of the great figures of modern journalism. For this reason, and because the kind of campaigning, reporting-based work he stood for is threatened as never before, his autobiography, written as he turned 80, is both gripping and timely."

The Economist

""Inspiring is an overused word. My Paper Chase truly is. Anyone who feels cynical about public life in general, and journalists in particular, should drink down this wonderful book in a single gulp. Harry Evans was the great crusader of the twentieth century British press. His memoir, which is also jaw-dropping social history, is the best education possible in what true journalism's all about."

Andrew Marr - BBC

[My Paper Chase] is a work of extravagant exuberance. It is tough, optimistic, full of verve and friendship, written with clarity and energy, and goes like a train..."

Melvyn Bragg - The Telegraph

"Evocative and enjoyable...Evans has a young man's perennial ­enthusiasm: he is 81 going on 18. Reading his autobiography, one quickly grasps how he became the most successful editor of his generation. He exudes a combination of boundless enthusiasm, relentless energy and an almost childlike delight in the sheer ­wonderfulness of newspapers. How can they not survive? ...one feels the warmth of his sunny personality even as the lights seem to be going out in much of print journalism. He saw the best of it - o, lucky man!"

Robert Harris - The Times

A refreshing memoir...Evans jettisons hand-wringing over the 'vanished' times of its melencholy subtitle for one man's unquenchable enthusiasm for his life's work...My Paper Chase is the Gospel of Evans, and the gospel makes juicy copy.
— Christian Science Monitor

Justin Moyer

Like many others I was lucky to have worked with him. His book is illuminating and entertaining on his personal history and it gives a valuable record of what used to be known as English provincial life; more vital then, perhaps than now. But the important reason to read it is that it tells you how good newspapers were once made and why they still matter.
— The Guardian

Ian Jack

Inspiring is an overused word. My Paper Chase truly is. Anyone who feels cynical about public life in general, and journalists in particular, should drink down this wonderful book in a single gulp. Harry Evans was the great crusader of the twentieth century British press. His memoir, which is also jaw-dropping social history, is the best education possible in what true journalism's all about.
— BBC

Andrew Marr

[My Paper Chase] is a work of extravagant exuberance. It is tough, optimistic, full of verve and friendship, written with clarity and energy, and goes like a train...
— The Telegraph

Melvyn Bragg

Evocative and enjoyable...Evans has a young man's perennial ­enthusiasm: he is 81 going on 18. Reading his autobiography, one quickly grasps how he became the most successful editor of his generation. He exudes a combination of boundless enthusiasm, relentless energy and an almost childlike delight in the sheer ­wonderfulness of newspapers. How can they not survive? ...one feels the warmth of his sunny personality even as the lights seem to be going out in much of print journalism. He saw the best of it - o, lucky man!
— The Times

Robert Harris