In 1984, he and his wife Tina Brown moved to the United States where he became an American citizen, retaining dual nationality.

[3][7] His father was an engine driver, while his mother ran a shop in their front room to enable the family to buy a car.

During his national service in the Royal Air Force (1946–1949),[3] he passed an intelligence test to become an officer, but did not hear anything further and served as a clerk.

[3] Following his appointment as a sub-editor on the Manchester Evening News, he was chosen by the International Press Institute to teach newspaper technique in India.

[9] Evans won a Harkness Fellowship in 1956–1957 to travel and study in the United States, spending periods at the universities of Chicago and Stanford.

[9] Nicholas Lemann observed that he "joined a long line of British journalists" who did similar studies, from Alistair Cooke to Andrew Sullivan.

[15] Early on during his period as editor came the title's exposure of Kim Philby in that year as a member of the Cambridge Spy ring who had been involved in espionage on behalf of Russia from 1933.

[16] Previously it had been claimed that Philby was a low-level diplomat at the time he fled to Moscow in 1963, whereas in actuality, he had been in charge of anti-Soviet intelligence and the chief officer responsible for maintaining contacts with the CIA.

[3] Evans was warned the revelations risked national security, receiving a D-notice requesting he should not publish at the beginning of September.

[3] A long-running issue during his tenure was thalidomide, a drug prescribed to expectant mothers suffering from morning sickness, which led to thousands of children in Britain having deformed limbs.

[10][11] The families of thalidomide victims eventually won compensation of £32.5 million as a consequence of Evans' Sunday Times campaign.

Evans risked prosecution under the Official Secrets Act 1911 for breaking the thirty-year rule preventing disclosures of government business.

In March 1982, a group of Times journalists called for Evans to resign, despite the paper's increase in circulation, claiming that he had overseen an "erosion of editorial standards".

[22] Evans was editorial director and vice-chairman of U.S. News & World Report, and The Atlantic Monthly from 1997 to January 2000, when he resigned.

On 20 August 1981, Evans and Brown married at Grey Gardens, in East Hampton, New York, the home of Ben Bradlee, then The Washington Post executive editor, and Sally Quinn.