Harold Evans - the man who put the fuel into The Northern Echo's rocket

Sir Harry was once voted the greatest newspaper editor of all time and is renowned for his work on the Sunday Times, particularly for his decade-long battle to get compensation for victims of the Thalidomide drug.

He exposed corporate secrets, raged against political ineptitude and revealed perhaps the greatest spy scandal of the 20th Century involving Kim Philby

But it was on the Echo that Sir Harry cut his campaigning teeth - it was here that his campaign to get the cervical smear available on the NHS began.

He arrived in Darlington in 1961 as a 31-year-old from the Manchester Evening News, in his home town, although he had spent three years studying economics and politics at Durham university.

He campaigned against inflammable nightclothes and called for improved road safety. He embraced the teenage spirit of the age, and he held a son et lumiere concert which raised money to floodlight Durham Cathedral for the first time – a forerunner of today’s Lumiere festivals.

He was most proud of his campaign to get the cervical smear test introduced free on the NHS.

He’d heard that Vancouver was trialling the test and didn’t understand why it shouldn’t be tried in somewhere like the North-East. He sent a reporter to Canada to investigate. After six weeks the reporter returned to Darlington and said the world expert on cervical smears was in Gateshead hospital but no-one would listen to him.

Evans listened – and persuaded the Government to introduce a life-saving trial in the North-East in 1966.

His oddest campaign was when he offered his photographers a fiver if they could capture the 'Teesside smell' – a notorious and noxious waft that drifted the length of the Tees Valley and which the Teesside chemical industry refused to accept existed.

By chance, within five minutes of photographer Ossie Stanford taking a picture of a sunny Stockton lane, the haze which accompanied the smell descended on the lane, blotting out the sun. The before and after pictures forced ICI to accept that its emissions were an issue and Evans began to clean up the Teesside environment.

Perhaps his most profound campaign concerned Timothy Evans (no relation) who had been hanged for murdering his wife and child at 10 Rillington Place in London in 1950. Evans would be regarded now as a vulnerable adult, and it later transpired that mass murderer John Christie had been living, and indeed killing, in the flat beneath. Christie was, in all probability, guilty of murdering Evans’ family, yet the unfortunate man, unable to mount his own defence, had hanged.

The editor campaigned to have his namesake pardoned, and when Home Secretary Roy Jenkins granted it in 1966, it effectively ended the death sentence for all but high treason.

Harold Evans unveils The Northern Echo Tidy Village Trophy that was won by Sedgefield in October 1964

When Evans arrived at the Echo, it was deeply rooted in its community but hadn't done much campaigning for decades. “A rocket needs a solid base and The Northern Echo was deeply rooted in the region,” he once said. “All I had to do was put some fuel in the engine…”

First of all he modernised it so it sounded like a newspaper for the 1960s. He channelled the “vigour and bluntness” that he found on the North-East cultural scene through writers like Sid Chaplin and artists like Norman Cornish to create a clean and punchy paper.

On June 28, 1965, he swept away the frighteningly Victorian Gothic masthead on the top of page one and replaced it with the emphatic yet homely title piece which still graces the front page to this day (it's in a font called Clarendon).

One of Harold Evans' most enduring achievements is the floodlighting of Durham cathedral. Here, the first floodlights are installed in July 1964 prior to Evans' son et lumiere fundraising concert

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is interviewed by Sir Harold Evans, Editor-at-Large of Thomson Reuters, at the Women in the World summit in London on October 9, 2015

He gained a national reputation by presenting What the Papers Say on Granada Television, and left the Echo to edit the Sunday Times where his perseverance eventually won compensation for victims of the thalidomide morning sickness drug.

Since 1984 Sir Harold has been living, writing and editing in New York, with his second wife, Tina Brown. He founded Conde Nast Traveler magazine and served as president and publisher of Random House from 1990 to 1997, and was Reuters' editor-at-large.

 “Editor-at-large means you’re free to create as much havoc as they will tolerate,” he once explained.

He never forgot the North-East, and visited on a couple of occasions in recent years to revive his memories of his time in the editor's chair.

Durham University Vice-Chancellor pays tribute to ‘journalistic pioneer’, alumnus Sir Harold Evans 

Among the many tributes flooding in was from Professor Stuart Corbridge, Vice-Chancellor of Durham University.

He said: “Our community is devastated to learn of the loss of alumnus Sir Harold Evans - a journalistic pioneer whose exceptional career spanned decades and whose legacy will influence generations to come.

“Sir Harry is a deep loss to us all and will be remembered fondly here by so many of our staff, students, and alumni alike. Our thoughts and best wishes are with his family.”

Sir Harold was a former student of University College, Durham, where he read Politics and Economics, graduating with honours in 1952 after completing national service with the Royal Air Force. 

Born in Eccles and raised in Manchester, at the age of sixteen Harold left school and began working for The Reporter in Ashton-Under-Lyne. Going into journalism, he saw how important it was to study at university.

As a student here at Durham, he nurtured this passion, starting as a contributor and later editor of Palatinate, the University’s student publication. 

Sir Harold often spoke of his formative experiences at Durham. On a visit back to Durham to give a lecture for Students, he commented: “Durham was crucial for me… You would sit at dinner next to a Physician, a Musician, people from other subject areas and talk. There was a collision of all different disciplines. By talking you were already better educated.”

In 1998, he received an honorary doctorate from the university in recognition of his trailblazing journalistic and editorial career. 

Professor Wendy Chambers, Head of University College, Durham University, said: “Our University College community is deeply sad to learn of Sir Harry’s passing. He was a proud Castleman with a highly distinguished career.  He was a beacon of professionalism, integrity and advocacy many of our students continue to study and celebrate today; his legacy will be felt by generations to come. All of us here at Castle hold Sir Harry's family in our hearts and prayers during this sad time."

Palatinate Editors-in-Chief, Imogen Usherwood and Tash Mosheim, said: "Whenever we talk about Palatinate alumni, Sir Harold Evans’s name comes up.

"As students, to know that we are starting out in the same publication that such an important figure in journalism once did is inspiring. His contribution to journalism was remarkable and he will be much missed - we will always be proud to count him among former Palatinate editors."