Victoria Coren Mitchell was born on 18 August 1972 in Hammersmith, West London, to Alan Coren, a prominent British humorist, journalist, and editor of Punch magazine from 1978 to 1987, and Anne Kasriel, a consultant anaesthetist at Moorfields Eye Hospital. She was raised in Cricklewood, North London, alongside her older brother Giles Coren, who has pursued a career as a restaurant critic and columnist for The Times.

She attended St Paul’s Girls’ School, Hammersmith, before attending St John’s College, Oxford, from where she graduated with a first class degree in English in 1994. As a teenager, she wrote under a pseudonym and had her short story published in Just Seventeen magazine, and won a Daily Telegraph competition that saw her write a weekly column about her teenage life for four years.

After university, she became a freelance journalist and broadcaster. In 1999, she adapted the newspaper columns of John Diamond into a play, A Lump In My Throat, performed at The Grace Theatre and The New End Theatre in London, before re-adapting it as a TV play for BBC Two. She landed the role of presenter of Balderdash and Piffle on BBC Two in 2006, and in 2008 joined as the presenter of Heresy on Radio 4.

She has hosted the BBC quiz show Only Connect since its inception in 2008. The programme, originally broadcast on BBC Four, moved to BBC Two in 2014. She has been married to David Mitchell since 17 November 2012 and they have two children.