About Varsity

Varsity Trivia

• Varsity has its origins in a newspaper first published for about a year in 1931, re-establishing itself in 1947 despite the rationing of newsprint after the War in the form we are now familiar with.
• In the mid-1970s it merged with the radical paper 'Stop Press' and was known for some years as 'Stop Press with Varsity' before reverting to the more well-known Varsity branding.
• Famous ex-editors include presenter Jeremy Paxman, film director Michael Winner, the late television presenter & reporter Richard Whiteley, Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers, and novelist Robert Harris, as well as a slew of other journalists and media figures. BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan was once a news editor.
• Other notable contributors include playwright Michael Frayn, Clive James and even HRH Charles, Prince of Wales. Some of Sylvia Plath's earliest poems and J G Ballard's first published story were written for the paper. Meanwhile, legendary comic Peter Cook met his first wife while posing for a Varsity May Ball photoshoot.
• Novelist Zadie Smith was first noticed by literary agents after her short story appeared in the 1997 edition of 'The Mays'.
• Varsity was the first newspaper in the world to report the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick following the discovery of their double helix in Cambridge.
• We don’t like to show off, but The Guardian even used to run conferences for student newspaper editors entitled ‘Why Your Paper isn’t as good as Varsity’!
• Varsity is one of only two UK student newspapers to be completely independent of the student union and University, the other being Oxford University's 'Cherwell'.
• Varsity will celebrate its sixtieth birthday in 2007, and has one of the world’s oldest student newspaper websites, has just celebrated its tenth birthday (October 2006)!