Former editors of The Times and The Sunday Times receive knighthoods in the New Year Honours.
Harold Evans has had to wait 21 years since stepping down from the editor’s chair to receive his award.
Times editor from 1990 to 1992, Simon Jenkins is also honoured.
Evans has lived in New York for the past 20 years. He started his career on a weekly in Ashton-under-Lyme, later working for the Manchester Evening News as assistant editor and as editor of the Northern Echo.
He joined The Sunday Times in 1966 and was appointed editor the following year.
After Rupert Murdoch’s takeover, Evans was appointed editor of The Times in 1981. He stayed for just a year and resigned after accusing Murdoch of breaking promises about editorial interference.
During his tenure, The Sunday Times launched acclaimed investigations into sanctions busting in Rhodesia and compensation for victims of Thalidomide.
Jenkins joined Country Life magazine in 1965 after leaving Oxford. He later worked on the Times Educational Supplement and the Evening Standard.
On his way to the editorship of The Times, he was Insight editor of The Sunday Times and editor of the Evening Standard.
Former Newsquest chairman Jim Brown is awarded a CBE for services to regional journalism.
Brown started his career as a reporter on the Ayrshire Post, rising to chief executive of Newsquest, a company he helped form in January 1996 when he led a management buyout of Reed Regional Newspapers. Brown retired last year after overseeing a period when Newsquest doubled in size.
A racing journalist who this year completes 60 years in the business is awarded the MBE in recognition of his work for charity. John Morgan worked for Yorkshire Post Newspapers for 56 years and has more recently written racing columns for the Scarborough Evening News and the Malton Mercury.
Daily Mail cartoonist Mac – Stanley McMurtry – gets an MBE, as does Evening Standard restaurant critic of 30 years’ standing, Fay Maschler.
Belfast Telegraph journalist Alf McCreary also receives the MBE in recognition of his charity work and services to journlism.
Veteran cartoonist and illustrator Ronald Searle gets a CBE.
By Dominic Ponsford
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