Leamington Courier

The Leamington Courier (more formally, the Leamington Spa Courier) is a weekly tabloid newspaper sold in and around the town of Royal Leamington Spa in southern Warwickshire, in a circulation area that includes much of the south and east of the county.

It was founded in 1828 as a broadsheet. It took the penchant for long newspaper titles to an extreme – its full title was the Leamington Spa Courier, and Alcester, Atherstone, Coleshill, Henley-in-Arden, Kineton, Kenilworth, Knowle, Nuneaton, Rugby, Solihull, Southam, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Warwick Borough and County Gazette! The two founders, John Fairfax and James Sharp Senior, fell out almost immediately over political differences. Fairfax (a liberal) left and founded the unsuccessful Leamington Chronicle; he subsequently went on to bigger things as proprietor of the Sydney Morning Herald.

It went tabloid in 1983, a move which met with some opposition from readers fearful that the change meant the paper was going downmarket.

It was taken over by Emap in 1987. The Johnston Press group of regional papers took over Emap in 1996; for a time the Courier was published by their Central Counties Newspapers subsidiary, but it’s currently part of the Northamptonshire Newspapers branch. The editorial offices are in Leamington.

There are sub-editions for Warwick (the Warwick Courier) and Kenilworth (the Kenilworth Weekly News). There’s also a companion weekly freesheet, the Courier Midweek.

It comes out on Fridays.

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