Evan Harris was born on 21 October 1965 in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, the son of South African Jewish parents (his father was a medical professor). He was brought up in Liverpool, where he had a state education at the Liverpool Blue Coat School. In 1984 he won a scholarship to the independent Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, California, and later won a scholarship to attend Wadham College, Oxford, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in physiology and a diploma in medical sociology. He completed his education at the Oxford Medical School, where he graduated BM BCh and qualified as a physician in 1991.