The Isis is a student publication at the University of Oxford, where the magazine was established in 1892. Traditionally a rival to the student newspaper Cherwell, Isis was finally acquired by the latter's publishing house, Oxford Student Publications Limited, in the late 1990s. It now operates as a termly magazine and website, providing an outlet for features journalism, although for most of its life it appeared weekly. The two publications are named after the two rivers in Oxford, "Isis" being the local name for the River Thames.

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.