Tina Brown
Christina Hambley Brown, Lady Evans[1] CBE (born 21 November 1953), is an English journalist, magazine editor, columnist, broadcaster, and author. She is the former editor in chief of Tatler (1979 to 1982), Vanity Fair (1984 to 1992) and The New Yorker (1992 to 1998), and the founding editor in chief of The Daily Beast (2008 to 2013). From 1998 to 2002, Brown was chairman of Talk Media, which included Talk Magazine and Talk Miramax Books. In 2010, she founded Women in the World, a live journalism platform to elevate the voices of women globally, with summits held through 2019. Brown is author of The Diana Chronicles (2007), The Vanity Fair Diaries (2017) and The Palace Papers (2022).[2][3][4]
This article is about the British journalist. For the American Olympic rower, see Tina Brown (rower). For the British athlete, see Tina Brown (runner).
Tina Brown
Journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host, author
2
As a magazine editor, she has received four George Polk Awards, five Overseas Press Club awards, and ten National Magazine Awards,[5] and in 2007 was inducted into the Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame. In 2021, she was honored as a Library Lion by the New York Public Library.[6] In 2022, Women in Journalism, the UK's leading networking and training organization for journalists, honored her with their Lifetime Achievement Award.[7]
Born in England, Brown emigrated in 1984 and became a U.S. citizen in 2005. She now holds dual British-American citizenship. In 2000, she was appointed a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for her services to journalism overseas,[8] by Queen Elizabeth II. In September 2022, she was a CBS commentator for the funeral of the Queen, alongside Norah O'Donnell, Gayle King, Julian Payne, and Wesley Kerr.
In 2023, in partnership with Reuters and Durham University, Brown hosted Truth Tellers, the inaugural Sir Harry Evans Global Summit in Investigative Journalism at the Royal Institute of British Architects, in honor of her late husband Sir Harold Evans, the former editor of The Sunday Times. The event featured over 60 investigative journalists and editors from the U.K, the U.S, Ukraine, Mexico, Russia, Nigeria, South Africa, Canada, Iran, Bulgaria and France. Among the featured guests were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in conversation with Emily Maitlis about What Makes a Great Investigative Journalist, Activist Bill Browder, Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev, Head of Investigations and Chairwoman of the Board for the Anti-Corruption Foundation (founded by Alexei Navalny) Maria Pevchikh and Russian journalist and writer Mikhail Zygar on the weaponization of media in Russia, and the creator and writer of HBO show Succession Jesse Armstrong. The Truth Tellers summit will now take place annually.
Early life and education[edit]
Brown was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, and grew up in the village of Little Marlow, in Buckinghamshire.[9] Her father, George Hambley Brown, worked in the British film industry producing the Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford. Her mother, Bettina Kohr, who married George Brown in 1948, was an executive assistant to Laurence Olivier on his first two Shakespeare films. Brown's elder brother, Christopher Hambley Brown, became a film producer.[9]
Brown was considered "an extremely subversive influence"[10] as a child, resulting in her expulsion from three boarding schools. Offenses included organizing a demonstration to protest against the school's policy of allowing a change of underwear only three times a week, referring to her headmistress's bosoms as "unidentified flying objects" in a journal entry, and writing a play about her school being blown up and a public lavatory being erected in its place.[10]
Brown entered the University of Oxford at the age of 17.[11] She studied at St Anne's College, and graduated with a BA in English Literature. As an undergraduate, she wrote for Isis, the university's literary magazine, to which she contributed interviews with the journalist Auberon Waugh and the actor Dudley Moore,[12] and for the New Statesman.[13] Her irreverent article about an invitation from Waugh to a Private Eye lunch caught the eye of New Statesman editor Anthony Howard who offered her an Oxford column.[14]
While still at Oxford, she won The Sunday Times National Student Drama Award for her one-act play Under the Bamboo Tree, which was performed at the Bush Theatre and the Edinburgh Festival. A subsequent play, Happy Yellow, was mounted at the London fringe Bush Theatre in 1977 and was later performed at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Personal life[edit]
In 1973, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh introduced Brown's writings to Harold Evans, editor of The Sunday Times, who was then married to Enid Parker. In 1974, Brown was given freelance assignments by Ian Jack, the paper's features editor. When a relationship developed between Brown and Evans, Brown resigned to write for the rival Sunday Telegraph.[15] Evans divorced Parker in 1978, and he and Brown married on August 20, 1981, at Grey Gardens, the East Hampton, New York, home of The Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn.[16] They lived together in New York City until Evans's death on September 23, 2020. They had two children: a son, Georgie, born in 1986, and a daughter, Isabel, born in 1990.[17] Evans was knighted for his services to journalism in 2004.
Career[edit]
Punch[edit]
After graduating from Oxford, Brown was invited to write a weekly column for the literary humor magazine Punch. These articles and her freelance contributions to The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph earned her the Catherine Pakenham Award for the best journalist under 25.[9] Some of the writings from this era formed part of her first collection Loose Talk, published by Michael Joseph.
Tatler[edit]
In 1979, Brown was invited to edit Tatler by its new owner, the Australian real estate millionaire Gary Bogard. During her tenure, she turned the society magazine into a successful modern glossy magazine with covers by celebrated photographers Norman Parkinson, Helmut Newton, and David Bailey, and fashion by Michael Roberts. Tatler featured writers from Brown's circle, including Julian Barnes, Dennis Potter, Auberon Waugh, Brian Sewell, Martin Amis, Georgina Howell (whom Brown appointed deputy editor),[18] and Nicholas Coleridge. She transformed the social coverage with pictures by her young discovery Dafydd Jones.[19] Brown wrote content for every issue, contributing sharp surveys of the upper classes. She traveled through Scotland for a feature titled "North of the Border with the Thane of Cawdor" and wrote short satirical profiles of eligible London bachelors under the pen name Rosie Boot.
Tatler covered the emergence of Lady Diana Spencer, soon to become Princess of Wales. Brown joined NBC's Tom Brokaw in running commentary for The Today Show on the royal wedding on July 29, 1981. Tatler's circulation increased from 10,000 to 40,000.[12] In 1982, when Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr., owner of Condé Nast Publications, bought Tatler, Brown resigned to assume writing full-time writer again.[20] She also hosted several episodes of the long-running television series Film82 for BBC1 as a guest presenter.[21]