28 June 1928 – 23 September 2020
The thalidomide campaigner on a ‘true English gent’, the newspaper giant who brought the scandal to the world’s attention and will always be his hero

• John Lewis remembered by Bryan Stevenson
  
• Read the Observer’s obituaries of 2020 in full

The first time I met Harry Evans – he never let us call him Sir Harold, that was a no-no – was in 2009. My late wife, Louise [Medus-Mansell, a thalidomide survivor and lifelong campaigner who died in 2018] and I went to New York for our first wedding anniversary. Louise was desperate to give Harry a copy of a book she’d written. We’d found his address in New York but hadn’t been able to make contact. Just before we were about to leave, the phone goes off and it was his PA saying: “Harry’s really sorry that he hasn’t gotten back to you, but he just stepped off a cruise. Come around at four.”

So we went to his apartment on the Upper East Side and as soon as we walked in, there were big hugs from Harry. Proper china teacups came out – he was a typical English gent – and we sat down and reminisced for an hour and a half. Louise had known Harry since she was very young: she was a focal point of the thalidomide campaign in the late 60s and early 70s and Harry went on telly with Louise’s dad, David Mason, to raise awareness. When we met in New York, Louise was having a bit of a feud with her dad, because of something she’d written in her book, and Harry said: “Never you mind, I’ve always got your back. I will never let you children down.”