Newbury is a busy market town in West Berkshire at the crossroads of the A34 and the M4, 65 miles west of London. The seat also includes the towns of Thatcham and Hungerford, but is largely rural, taking in about half the acreage of Berkshire.
The seat has several connections with horseracing: there is the famous course at Newbury itself, and Lambourn is the centre of the Downland racehorse training. The constituency is also no stranger to protests: during the 1980s, there was the famous occupation at Greenham Common by the women opposing the siting of American nuclear weapons at the RAF base of the same name. In the early 1990s, it was environmental protesters who came to the area to campaign against the building of a bypass, the building of which eventually commenced in January 1996.
This constituency is one which excites political anoraks on account of the famous Liberal Democrat by-election victory here in 1993, when David Rendel beat the Tory candidate by over 22,000 votes on a swing of 28.4%. At the 1997 Tory massacre, the Liberal Democrats held on with a majority of over 8,500.