Yesterday, the news broke that the legendary editor and writer Sir Harold Evans had passed away at the age of 92. In addition to overseeing some of the most important investigative journalism of the late 20th century in his role as editor of The Sunday Times and other titles in both the U.K. and the U.S., he founded this magazine in 1987, adopting the slogan “Truth in Travel” as a differentiator from the other kinds of travel journalism out there at the time.
The novelist and satirist Christopher Buckley, who wrote and photographed the very first Condé Nast Traveler cover story that year, recalls his time working with Mr. Evans.
There was a rumor going around in late 1986 (it must have been) that Condé Nast was going to launch a new magazine devoted entirely to travel. To a hack freelance writer like myself, this was exciting news. Condé Nast was—okay, is—the Queen of the Newsstands. It set the gold standard for glossies. And paid accordingly, if not in actual gold.
So when it was officially announced, the cheer went up in Freelanceville.
It was further announced that the editor of the new book (as we in the biz call magazines, for no clear reason) would be Harold Evans.
This was intriguing. Wasn’t Harry Evans the legendary newspaperman and “crusading” (pardon the cliché) editor who broke some of the biggest stories in the history of British journalism? Answer: yes, including exposing the scandal of the “morning sickness” medicine Thalidomide that resulted in terrible birth deformities; and the real extent of the carnage wrought by the “Third Man” Kim Philby, the Kremlin’s top agent inside British intelligence. Another Evans exposé directly resulted in the abolition of the death penalty in England.
So, wow. But did any of this have to do with travel? Not that anyone was complaining, mind. It just seemed that Mr. Evans was kind of overqualified for the job. Or differently qualified. But whatever.
Sometime after that, my phone rang. (I know: It sounds so quaint, but in those days, editors telephoned writers.) At the other end was a British accent—Northern English, not the plummy, marinated-in-sherry, Eton-Oxbridge-Ew-Do-I-kneow-yew? These were also pre-caller ID days, so I was at a loss as to who it was until he said, “Sorry to bother you. It’s Harold Evans. Look, don’t ask me why, but Si Newhouse has asked me to edit this new magazine about travel and I was wondering if you might be enticed into writing something for it?”
This was a I-don’t-think-we’re-in-Kansas-Toto moment. I managed to stammer that I might, uh, be able to find a hole in my schedule in which to “write something.” I hung up and thought, Did the Harry Evans really just call me? Second cliché alert: I walked on air the rest of the day.
The Harry Evans called back sometime later and said, “Malcolm Forbes and some other billionaire are taking their yachts up the Amazon. Would you be interested in covering that for our first issue?”
By this point my ability to speak was hampered, but I must have managed to mutter something resembling a “yes,” because a few weeks later I found myself—still incoherent, but functional—aboard Malcolm Forbes’s very cool 151-foot yacht Highlander, in Manaus, Brazil. I was there as a working journalist, though I was treated like a guest. The other guests were somewhat more glam than my own shabby, ink-stained self, including the King and Queen of Bulgaria (Simeon would later become the first king in history to be elected prime minister of his former monarchy), and Theodore Roosevelt’s grandson, Archie Roosevelt, a distinguished veteran of the CIA fluent in 20 languages. The King of Bulgaria spoke only nine.
The “other billionaire” was John Kluge, then, according to Forbes, the second wealthiest man in America. He was aboard Malcolm’s previous yacht, now named Virginian, and had brought as his guests the King and Queen of Greece. This seemed squarely to fall into the Only in America category: two billionaires with matching sets of royalty.
That 1,200-mile trip up the Amazon from Manaus to Iquitos became the first cover story of the new Condé Nast Traveler. Bonus detail: Harry said to me, “You wouldn’t mind taking the pictures, too, would you? We’ll pay you whatever the going rate, on top of the fee for writing it.”
Five years later, Harry was editor-in-chief of Random House and published my novel Thank You For Smoking. Third—but final—cliché alert: I still pinch myself, thinking how lucky I was to have known this remarkable, lovely, vivacious soul who came into my life and transformed it. And how luckier still I was to have been his friend. —Christopher Buckley
Author Gully Wells, an editor at Condé Nast Traveler for more than 20 years, looks back on being a part of the magazine’s founding team.
Harry Evans was, without doubt, the most brilliant editor I have ever had the great good fortune to work for. He was the real deal.
It is almost impossible to describe my excitement way back in 1985, when the legendary Sir Harold Evans called me and asked if by any chance I’d like to come and join him in the creation of a totally new magazine called the Condé Nast Traveler. By any chance? I thought. Are you crazy? Oh yes, Harry, there is nothing on earth I’d like to do more. And that was how I found myself welcomed into Harry’s world. It was a magical place; infused with all of Harry’s energy, enthusiasm, courage, endless curiosity, ebullience, imagination, intelligence, and fun. Work hard, always, but have fun while you’re doing it. Ideas flew around the conference room at lightning speed. Some crazy, a few impossible, but all of them fascinating.
In addition to learning how a great editor puts together a great magazine, I discovered the art of finding just the right writer for just the right story, something that I could never have done without the help of my boss’s golden—excuse me, solid platinum—Rolodex. Was there any writer in the world worth discussing whom Harry didn’t know? Apparently not. Everybody who was anybody seemed thrilled (and why not?) to work for him.
One morning I was summoned to his office. When I walked through the door he was already in mid-sentence. (Did I mention that Harry’s mind—and legs—never stopped running?) “Wales!” he announced, jumping up, “We must do a story on Wales!”
“Yes, of course, we must,” I said, full of enthusiasm but also feeling a bit embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of it myself. The only question now was which brilliant writer was going to write it and which world-famous photographer would shoot it. Never one to waste time, Harry had already come up with the perfect photographer: his old friend Lord Snowdon, otherwise known as Tony. Apart from the fact that Tony had chosen Snowdon as his title when he’d married Princess Margaret (Snowdon being the name of the tallest mountain in Wales), I couldn’t quite see the connection, but what did that matter? It was my job to suggest the writer. “How about Martha Gellhorn? She lives in Wales.”
“Yes! That’s it!”
For some reason I can’t recall, Tony and Martha, who had never met, were going to have to travel together. (Usually the writer went to a place first, then the photographer followed using the story as a shoot list.) Other than having ill-advised and super famous exes (Princess Margaret and Ernest Hemingway), the two didn’t have a whole lot in common, as I soon discovered. In addition, the Welsh weather played its usual trick of raining nonstop. Oh dear. Martha took to referring to her travel companion the “diminutive Earl” when she called me from the road, but she grudgingly conceded that he wasn’t as bad as all that.
In the end it turned out to be a beautifully written story (cut to ribbons—and much improved—by Harry, after much squawking from Martha) combined with moody, evocative photos by Tony. It was judged to be brilliant, with Harry, ever generous with his praise and happy to share his success, even pronouncing it “a triumph.” Thank you, dear Harry, for everything you taught me that I know about being an editor. I will always be eternally grateful to you, I am so proud to have worked for you and will never, ever forget you. –Gully Wells
Writer Eden Collinsworth pays tribute to the relentlessly curious editor, in an essay originally published on Condé Nast Traveller U.K.
Harold Evans was a man who mastered several brilliant careers, all of which drew on his remarkable talents. I didn’t know him as the editor of newspapers, and so I leave it to those fortunate journalists who did to testify how he personified the noblest aspects of that profession.
I knew Harry at the point he was venturing into a different phase of his unique life. We met when he and Tina [Brown] moved to New York in 1984 and, by sheer happenstance, from that time forward, I shared three career paths with him.
Like Harry, I was a book publisher. Harry broadened the Random House list of titles and welcomed opportunities to introduce first-time authors, knowing that that, too, had worth on a balance sheet. He had a sense of what to publish at what price, and what to forgo and when. Authors—particularly the well-known ones—can be a mercurial lot who don’t take to casual interlopers or overbearing editors. As an editor, Harry was a brilliant craftsman who was genuinely appreciated by authors, no matter how unruly or problematic they could be.
Both of us launched a magazine. Despite the gap in our ages, Harry did it with just as much energy and—it must be said—far more panache. As the founding editor of Condé Nast Traveler, he had an innate understanding of good content, a great eye for design, and instinctive flair. Under his leadership, the publication broke new ground and its quality was recognized with a trove of awards.
I won’t compare our output as authors, only to say that his books were far more important in subject than mine, and that they deserved the glowing reviews they received.
It’s a challenge to think of Harry in comparative terms, and perhaps that’s how it should be, for he was a great many things at once and in equal measure. A crusading editor. A nimble publisher. A wonderful writer of books. Generous. Charismatic. Utterly charming. Sincere. Relentlessly curious. And, even now, already missed. —Eden Collinsworth
Robert Sullivan, the author of Rats and The Meadowlands and a frequent contributor to Vogue and The New Yorker, worked with Evans early in his career.
Harry Evans saved me. He took me in when nobody else would, by which I mean he snuck me into the magazine world even though, at the time, I was a newspaper reporter. More exactly, I was a 24-year-old newspaper reporter who had just quit over the way his stories were being edited at the city desk—a mistake perhaps, but if I hadn’t made it, I wouldn’t have met Harry.
This was back in 1987, the year he was starting up Condé Nast Traveler, a time when magazine editors were leery of newspaper reporters and vice versa. I failed the Condé Nast typing test, and had no experience in editing, but the human resources department said something along the lines of, “He’s looking for a reporter,” referring to Harry and saying reporter as if it were an off-color word.
I was allowed in as a fact checker, a job that required combing through the Harry-edited prose of writers and, yes, reporters I admired and sometimes worshipped. Watching Harry work was exhilarating for a young reporter trying to figure out magazines, not to mention publishing in general. And while it was a particularly difficult emotional transition from daily to monthly deadlines, I was fortunate to be making that transition with another newspaper reporter—Harry, who didn’t walk through the halls but jogged, as if we were on a daily deadline.
He would occasionally sit still and was extraordinarily approachable, and let the likes of me write a few stories. I remember like it was yesterday when he called me into his office, pulled up a second chair, printed out my copy, and then, with a pencil, quickly and carefully drew lines and circles that transformed it, like a magician on a very tight deadline. “Now, look closely at what I’ve done, Bob,” he said, racing off. What he’d done was simply make everything clear.
I should also mention that the other thing Harry did, aside from save me, was change my life. That happened when I met my wife, also at Traveler. On the day we both left the magazine there was champagne in the research library, not for the first time by any means. That was three decades ago but I still remember Harry in his uniform, dress shirt and plain blue tie, leaning on the low wall, laughing and chatting with the small group of wonderful people that he had assembled. I remember everyone having fun. Harry was fun. It was hard work working for Harry; there was always more to be done. But it was really fun. —Robert Sullivan
This article was last published in September 2020. It has been updated with new information.