The National Student Drama Festival (or NSDF) was founded in 1956 by the Sunday Times arts columnist - the festival's first artistic director - Kenneth Pearson, the Sunday Times theatre critic Harold Hobson, and NUS president Frank Copplestone. The Sunday Times Editor, H.V. Hodgson and Dr Glynne Wickham, the Winchester- and Oxford-educated great-grandson of Gladstone and head of the only Drama department in the United Kingdom in 1956 at the University of Bristol, were also early supporters.