Good Times, Bad Times, By Harold Evans

Rupert Murdoch in duplicitous memos shocker

Harold Evans resists the temptation – and what temptation it must have been – to gossip about Rupert Murdoch in this 1984 memoir of his 14-year tenure as the editor of The Sunday Times and one year at The Times.

Even before Murdoch acquired the papers, life was a constant and demanding political dance, whether between Cabinet ministers and legal advisors when publishing Richard Crossman's diaries, or with MI5 when chasing the Kim Philby story. But the shenanigans that resulted in Evans's ousting from The Times are shocking and fascinating – memos from Murdoch show a level of duplicity we now expect, but which for Evans then seemed a different kind of political game altogether – one he still regrets losing.