Inside Story: The Big Apple's big Brits To achieve success in London is one thing - but in New York it's quite another. Richard Gillis profiles the movers and shakers from over here who have hit the big time over there

SIR HAROLD EVANS

Evans, 77, has had one of the most storied careers in British and American journalism. A pioneering editor of The Sunday Times in the 1970s, he had a rancorous falling-out with new owner Rupert Murdoch, moving Stateside after a brief and tumultuous stint as editor of The Times in the early 1980s. Marriage to Tina Brown added to the legend and for a while they were the New York media's ultimate power couple. Evans became editorial director of US News & World Report, the founding editor of Condé Nast Traveler, president of the publishers Random House, and vice-chairman of New York's Daily News. He is a columnist for the American version of Felix Dennis's The Week and succeeded Alistair Cooke as the host of Radio 4's Letter from America.

MARK WNEK

One of a Brit-Pack of admen running New York agencies, Wnek is the outspoken chief creative officer and chairman of Lowe's New York Office, part of the Interpublic Group. A former Independent advertising columnist, Wnek began writing copy for Ogilvy & Mather in London, aged just 23. His Pure Genius campaign for Guinness helped him become the youngest board director in the agency's history three years later. He left EuroRSG to set up his own shop, only to see one of his new partners then take the job that he had just left.

ANNA WINTOUR

Vogue's Editor in Chief since 1988, "nuclear" Wintour was the thinly disguised model for Meryl Streep's turn in The Devil Wears Prada, the hype for which has merely added to her reputation as the grande dame of the fashion pack. AdAge, the influential US trade publication, voted her the editor of the year for 2006. The daughter of the former London Evening Standard and Press Gazette editor Charles Wintour, she has become the global face of the Vogue brand. This has meant being the target of sustained hostility from the animal-rights lobby outraged at Vogue's continued acceptance of the fur trade's advertising.

PLUM SYKES

A one-time disciple of Anna Wintour, Sykes, 34, worked as a fashion journalist for Vogue before hitting it big with Bergdorf Blondes, a novel satirising the young women who populate the upper echelons of New York society, and for which she was rumoured to have been paid a £350,000 advance by Penguin. Her brother, Tom, also wrote a New-York-themed book, What Did I Do Last Night? about the Old Etonian's experiences writing for the Post's Page Six gossip column.

COLIN MYLER

The former editor of the Mirror and the Sunday Mirror is now the managing editor of the News-International-owned New York Post. Myler is still associated with the collapse of the trial on assault charges of the Leeds United footballers Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer after the publication of an interview in the Sunday Mirror - of which Myler was then editor - with the father of the alleged victim. Myler's career began at a Liverpool news agency and for two years he left newspapers to be chief executive of Super League Europe, the marketing body for UK rugby league. As news editor of Today, he removed desks from the office to increase productivity.

ANDREW ROBERTSON

Robertson moved to New York in 2004 to become the chief executive of BBDO Worldwide, one of the most influential British-owned ad agencies on Madison Avenue. Shortly after settling into his new role and city, he told the ad bible Campaign: "There's a very real sense that this place is the centre of the universe. The sheer power, scale and importance of Wall Street, the whole New York vibe. It can feel like the capital of the world."

TINA BROWN

The former Tatler editor's reputation was made by turning the underperforming Vanity Fair into one of the most profitable magazine brands in the world. Mrs Harold Evans then became editor of The New Yorker in 1992 before launching her own magazine and book company, Talk, with support from Miramax film moguls Harvey and Bob Weinstein. When Talk went under, blaming the post-9/11 ad recession, Brown followed a TV career, interviewing major international political and entertainment figures for CNBC. She has a weekly column in The Washington Post and is working on a book on the legacy of Princess Diana's death for Random House.

JOANNA COLES

Coles is editor of the American Marie Claire. The former head of The Times' New York bureau, Coles worked her way up the Hearst Corporation, which publishes Marie Claire, as New York magazine's features editor and then editor of More. She has a Fleet Street background as a news reporter with the Daily Telegraph, and wrote weekly op-ed pieces for The Guardian. Coles is under pressure following a dip in circulation at Marie Claire - one of Hearst's flagship titles - and as a result of provoking Middle America with a nude cover shot of actress Ashley Judd in the November issue. Wrote a book, The Three of Us, about her move to New York with husband, BBC screenwriter Peter Godwin.

SARAH IVENS

Ivens, 30, moved from the No.2 spot on OK! to head up the American version of Richard Desmond's celebrity mag. From her start in local papers in Wanstead, Essex, she has enjoyed a meteoric rise, working on Tatler and the Daily Mail before joining OK!. She has survived a difficult first year in the New York celebrity jungle, with the magazine's price and cover design changed from that of its British sister to cater for American tastes. "We came over being very British," she said. "We thought we could take on America but we found American readers are totally different."

MARTIN DUNN

A former News International man, Dunn is the editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News, the city's tabloid currently locked in a bitter circulation battle with Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. Dunn was deputy editor of The Sun under Kelvin MacKenzie and then editor of the now defunct Today before heading for the Big Apple. When the Post's daily sale nudged ahead of the News for the first time, it ran a "Thank you, New York" front-page headline and splashed the news on a Times Square electronic billboard. It prompted Dunn to come out fighting: "If you lost $300m over the past five years, spent $200m on new presses, carpet-bombed neighbourhoods with free copies and lost a fortune to sell a few thousand copies in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, you'd be desperate to celebrate creeping a few copies ahead of us."