Nicholas Evans
BornNicholas Benbow Evans
(1950-07-26)26 July 1950
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England
Died9 August 2022(2022-08-09) (aged 72)
England
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • journalist
  • screenwriter
  • producer
EducationSt Edmund Hall, Oxford
Genre
Notable worksThe Horse Whisperer
Spouse
Jenny Lyon
​
​
(m. 1973, divorced)​
Children4

Nicholas Benbow Evans (26 July 1950 – 9 August 2022) was a British journalist, screenwriter, television and film producer and novelist.

Biography

Nicholas Benbow Evans was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, son of Anthony Evans, director of a motor engineering company, and Eileen, née Whitehouse. He was educated at Bromsgrove School, where he was head boy. He served as a teacher in Senegal with the charity Voluntary Service Overseas for a year, after which he earned a first in law at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford.[1][2][3] Following graduation he worked as a reporter for the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Evening Chronicle before moving to London Weekend Television where he worked on Weekend World and The London Programme and was executive producer of The South Bank Show from 1982 to 1984.[3] During this time he also wrote and adapted screenplays for television broadcast.[3]

He tried to enter into film producing in the early 1990s, but his efforts did not come to fruition, and The New York Times described him as "broke and adrift" at that stage in his life; he had also been diagnosed with melanoma, though he would recover.[4] But during this time, he heard from a friend a "story that made me shiver": a "horse whisperer" in southwest England who could heal and soothe horses. £60,000 in debt, he decided to write the story as a novel as opposed to a screenplay, having felt burned by his previous attempts to mount his own film. In the course of research, he travelled to the U.S. states of Montana, New Mexico, and California. The rights for his novel were sold by his agent and friend Caradoc King for US$3 million at the 1994 Frankfurt Book Fair.[1]

His debut novel The Horse Whisperer was No. 10 on the list of bestselling novels in the United States for 1995 as determined by The New York Times. With 15 million copies sold, it is on the list of the best-selling books of all time.[5] In the UK, The Horse Whisperer was listed at 195 on the BBC's Big Read, a 2003 survey with the goal of finding the "nation's best-loved book".[6] It was made into a film in 1998; Robert Redford directed, and he starred opposite Kristin Scott Thomas, along with Scarlett Johansson and Sam Neill.[4]

Evans revealed on his personal website that he agreed to an option to make a film of his third novel, The Smoke Jumper.[7]

Personal life and death

Evans married Oxford classmate Jenny Lyon in 1973; they had two children and divorced in the 1990s.[1] He then married singer-songwriter Charlotte Gordon Cumming. They had one child, and he also had a child from a relationship with television producer Jane Hewland.[1][4]

Evans, Cumming and several of their relatives were poisoned in September 2008 after mistakenly consuming deadly webcap mushrooms that they gathered on holiday in Morayshire. They all had to undergo kidney dialysis,[8] and Evans underwent a transplant in 2011 using a kidney donated by his daughter.[9]

Evans died from a heart attack at his home on 9 August 2022, aged 72.[10] Media sources differed on whether he died in London[4] or in Totnes, Devon.[1]

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Smith, Harrison (15 August 2022). "Nicholas Evans, whose 'Horse Whisperer' became a phenomenon, dies at 72". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 16 August 2022. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
  2. ↑ Walker, Amy (15 August 2022). "The Horse Whisperer author Nicholas Evans dies at 72". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 15 August 2022. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 "Nicholas Evans obituary". The Guardian. 16 August 2022. Retrieved 17 August 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Green, Penelope (15 August 2022). "Nicholas Evans, Author of 'The Horse Whisperer,' Dies at 72". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 15 August 2022. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
  5. ↑ The Forres Gazette Archived 27 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine on The Horse Whisperer: "Mr Evans is the author of "The Horse Whisperer", which sold 15 million copies worldwide and was made into a Hollywood film in 1998 directed by and starring Robert Redford." (10 September 2008)
  6. ↑ "BBC – The Big Read". BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 17 August 2022
  7. ↑ "Nicholas Evans". Archived from the original on 9 March 2013. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
  8. ↑ Sweeney, Charlene (3 September 2008). "Horse Whisperer author, Nicholas Evans, poisoned by wild mushrooms". The Times. Archived from the original on 16 August 2022. Retrieved 16 August 2022.
  9. ↑ "Horse whisperer: how my daughter saved my life". The Daily Telegraph. 2 August 2011. Archived from the original on 19 September 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  10. ↑ Brown, Lauren (15 August 2022). "Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer, dies aged 72". The Bookseller. Archived from the original on 15 August 2022. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
  11. ↑ Evans, Nicholas (1995). The horse whisperer. New York: Delacorte Press. ISBN 978-0-385-31523-4.
  12. ↑ Evans, Nicholas (1999). The Loop. Corgi Books. ISBN 978-0-593-04485-8. Retrieved 16 August 2022.
  13. ↑ Evans, Nicholas (2001). The Smoke Jumper. London: Bantam Press. ISBN 978-0-593-04525-1. Retrieved 16 August 2022.
  14. ↑ Evans, Nicholas (2005). The Divide. New York: Putnam. ISBN 978-0-7394-5871-6.
  15. ↑ Evans, Nicholas (2010). The Brave : a novel (1st ed.). New York: Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 978-0316033787.
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