Life
Varah was born in the town of Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire, the eldest of nine children of the vicar at the Anglican church of St Peter. His father, Canon William Edward Varah, a strict Tractarian, named him after St Chad, who, according to Bede, had founded the seventh century monastery 'ad Bearum', 'at Barrow', which may have occupied an Anglo-Saxon enclosure next to Barton Vicarage.
He was educated at Worksop College in north Nottinghamshire and won an exhibition to read natural sciences at Keble College, Oxford University, quickly switching to Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). He was involved in the university Russian and Slavonic clubs, and was founder-president of the Scandinavian Club. He graduated with a third-class degree in 1933.
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