Alumni also include heads of state, government officials, leaders in intergovernmental organisations, and a former chief economist at the Bank of England.

A partnership of the city and county councils ultimately provided the impetus for the university to be established on a 400-acre (1.6 km2) site jointly granted by the two authorities.

The university also benefited from a substantial donation from the family of John Martin, a Coventry businessman who had made a fortune from investment in Smirnoff vodka, and which enabled the construction of the Warwick Arts Centre.

[16] On the recommendation of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bill Clinton chose Warwick as the venue for his last major foreign policy address as US President in December 2000.

Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Advisor, explaining the decision in a press briefing on 7 December 2000, said that: "Warwick is one of Britain's newest and finest research universities, singled out by Prime Minister Blair as a model both of academic excellence and independence from the government.

[18][19] It was academic partner for a number of flagship Government schemes including the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth and the NHS University which is now defunct.

[26][27] In February 2010, Lord Bhattacharyya, director and founder of the WMG unit at Warwick, made a £1 million donation to the university to support science grants and awards.

[45] It attracts around 300,000 visitors a year to over 3,000 individual events spanning contemporary and classical music, drama, dance, comedy, films and visual art.

The centre comprises six principal spaces: the Butterworth Hall, a 1,500-seat concert hall; a 550-seat theatre; a 180-seat theatre studio; three cinema screens; the Mead Gallery, an art gallery; and the Music Centre, with practice rooms, and an ensemble rehearsal room where music societies and groups can rehearse.

There is a student-run facility called the ‘Learning Grid’ in the building, which includes two floors of PC clusters, scanners, photocopiers, a reference library, interactive whiteboards and plasma screens for use by individuals and for group work.

[50][51] The Koan is 6 metres (20 ft) high,[50] white in colour, decorated with elliptical of fluorescent lights and is rotated by an electric motor whilst illuminated.

The Koan was made in 1971 as part of the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation City Sculpture Project and was originally sited in Plymouth; it moved to the Hayward Gallery in London before being purchased by Warwick in 1972.

[50] The Koan was temporarily relocated to the university's Gibbet Hill campus during refurbishments to the Warwick Arts Centre; it was returned upon completion of the project.

[52] According to student newspaper The Boar, the white Koan has played a role in many of campus' myths and legends – it was allegedly the nose-cap of the Blue-Streak Missile, a supposed quick escape route for senior staff, and even a signalling device for aliens in outer space.

[53] In April 2019, the university opened a new £49 million Sports and Wellness Hub, on the main campus,[55][56] featuring two sports halls with arena style balcony, the largest gym in the Higher education sector, a 12-lane 25 metre pool with movable floor, climbing and bouldering walls, squash courts, studio spaces and a café.

[66] The centre is sponsored by Uninn and Coventry City Football Club, partnered with Sky Blues in the Community, Women in Games and Special Effect and has its tech supplied by Chillblast and HyperX.

The campus has been dubbed a "brain trust" and is intended to pioneer the green and high-tech sports and luxury cars of tomorrow, doubling the size of Jaguar's research team.

[70] In 2017, the university announced its intention to see an exponential growth of its main campus in order to remain "world-class" and cope with the growing number of applications it receives each year, especially from non-UK students.

[109] In the 2016–17 academic year, the university had a domicile breakdown of 66:9:25 of UK:EU:non-EU students respectively with a female to male ratio of 50:50.

[112] Warwick is particularly strong in the areas of decision sciences research including economics, finance, management, mathematics and statistics.

For instance, researchers of the Warwick Business School have won the highest prize of the prestigious European Case Clearing House.

The Union has an annual turnover of approximately £6 million, the profit from which is used to provide services to students and to employ its staff and sabbatical officers.

The Union Building contains a three-room club venue known as "The Copper Rooms"; CAMRA-accredited "The Dirty Duck" pub; a popular bar called "The Terrace Bar"; Curiositea, a tea shop known for its hot chocolates, cakes and vintage atmosphere; The Graduate, a postgraduate social and study space; and The Bread Oven, a design-your-own sandwich shop.

[126][127] In June 2014, the university announced Alex Davies, a member of the proscribed terrorist organisation National Action, voluntarily withdrew from his course.

[131] In June 2024, Students of the University's Conservative association were filmed singing and dancing to the Nazi-era World War II marching song "Erika" at their annual black-tie dinner.

Jóhannesson, President of Iceland; Luis Arce, President of Bolivia; Joseph Ngute, Prime Minister of Cameroon; Yakubu Gowon, former President of Nigeria; Sir Gus O'Donnell, former Cabinet Secretary and head of the British Civil Service; Andrew Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England; David Davis, former Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and former Shadow Home Secretary; Baroness Valerie Amos, the eighth UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator and former Leader of the House of Lords; Mahmoud Mohieldin the Senior Vice President of the World Bank Group; Bob Kerslake, former Head of the Home Civil Service; Kim Howells, former Foreign Office Minister; and Isabel Carvalhais, Portuguese MEP (S&D Group); H.A Hellyer, led the British government's Taskforce on Tackling Radicalisation and Extremism; George Chouliarakis, Greek Alternate Minister of Finance; and Sir Bob Kerslake, Head of the Home Civil Service.

In academia, people associated with Warwick include: Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1975) winner Sir John Cornforth who was a professor at Warwick; mathematicians Ian Stewart, David Preiss, David Epstein and Fields Medallist Martin Hairer; computer scientists Mike Cowlishaw and Leslie Valiant; and neurologist Oliver Sacks.

In arts and the social sciences: Nobel Laureate Oliver Hart; economist and President of the British Academy Nicholas Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford; academic and Provost of Worcester College Sir Jonathan Bate; academic and journalist Germaine Greer; literary critic Susan Bassnett; historians Sir J. R. Hale and David Arnold; economist Andrew Oswald; economic historian Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky; Lady Margaret Archer, theorist in critical realism, former Warwick lecturer and accelerationist philosopher Nick Land, former President of International Sociological Association, current president of Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; Sir George Bain, former Principal of London Business School; John Williamson, English economist who coined the term Washington Consensus; Susan Strange, British scholar of international relations who was almost single-handedly responsible for creating international political economy; Avinash Dixit, former President of the Econometric Society and American Economic Association, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2005; Robert Calderbank, winner of the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal and the Claude E. Shannon Award; and Upendra Baxi, winner of the Padma Shri award.

Notable Warwick alumni in media, entertainment and the arts include Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning Stephen Merchant, best known for being the co-writer and co-director of the sitcoms The Office and Extras; Oscar-nominated screenwriter Tony Roche, known for co-writing and co-producing Veep and The Thick of It; Emmy and BAFTA-winner Brett Goldstein; Olivier Award-winning director and writer Dominic Cooke, who is also artistic director at the Royal Court Theatre; actress Ruth Jones; comedian and actor Frank Skinner; Guardian columnist Dawn Foster; blacksmith turned comedian and comedy writer Lloyd Langford; actors Matt Stokoe and Adam Buxton; science fiction and fantasy author Jonathan Green; actor Julian Rhind-Tutt; Olivier Award-winning actor, Alex Jennings; author Anne Fine; author A.L.

Kennedy; Tony Wheeler, creator of the Lonely Planet travel guides; Camila Batmanghelidjh; Merfyn Jones, governor of the BBC; and electronic dance music artist Gareth Emery.