Sir Richard Evans was born in London to Welsh parents and was educated on an Essex County Council scholarship at Forest School. He studied at Jesus and St Antony’s Colleges, Oxford.
He holds a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Oxford, Doctorates of Letters from the Universities of Cambridge and East Anglia, and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Oxford and London and from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.
He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature and the Learned Society of Wales, and an Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Birkbeck, University of London, and Jesus College, Oxford. In 2022, he was made an Honorary Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
He has served as Vice-Master and Acting Master of Birkbeck, University of London, Chairman of the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge, and Provost of Gresham College, City of London, from 2014 to 2020. He is currently the Deputy Chair of the Spoliation Advisory Panel for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
In 2000, he was Principal Expert Witness in the libel action brought by David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, as dramatized in the movie Denial (2016).