Victoria Coren Mitchell

Victoria Elizabeth Coren Mitchell ( Coren; born ) is a British writer, TV presenter and professional poker player. She writes weekly columns for The Daily Telegraph and has hosted the BBC television quiz show Only Connect since 2008. Early life Victoria Elizabeth Coren was born in Hammersmith, West London, the only daughter of the humorist and journalist Alan Coren and Anne Kasriel. Her father had been brought up in an Orthodox Jewish household. She grew up in Cricklewood, North London, with her elder brother, journalist Giles Coren. She is related to Canadian journalist Michael Coren. Coren attended independent girls' schools between the ages of five and 18, including St Paul's Girls' School, and read English at St John's College, Oxford. She recalls not fitting in to the culture at St Paul's, stating, "My parents sent me to a very posh school in West London. I was not like the girls there. They were elegant, goyishe west Londoners — they knew things I didn’t". Writing At the age of 14, Coren had a short story published under a pseudonym in Just Seventeen magazine and then won a competition in The Daily Telegraph to write a column about teenage life for their "Weekend" section, which she continued writing during her own teenage years. During a Channel 4 broadcast, she explained that one Telegraph reader had written to her, criticising her column and had used a very great number of swear words, all in Latin.