Amol Rajan is a reporter at The Independent. He studied English at Cambridge University after spending a gap year at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, during which he became unofficially the youngest diplomat ever to represent the UK at a political conference abroad. At Cambridge, he edited Varsity, the student newspaper, and The Griffin, the newspaper of Downing College.

After graduating, Amol worked at The Wright Stuff, Channel 5’s flagship show, where he was mic boy and assistant producer.  He has appeared on Channel 5’s Talk to the Prime Minister, BBC News 24, 18DoughtyStreet.com Fox News Live in America and City Talk Radio 105.9 in Liverpool.

Amol is a regular judge in the Institute of Ideas’ national debating competition for 6th formers, Debating Matters, and is on the committee for the Battle of Ideas, the Institute of Ideas’ annual weekend festival.
He has written for The Times, The Evening Standard, spiked, Culture Wars, ISIS (the Oxford University student paper), and The Salisbury Review, and is a volunteer at Prospex, a charity for young people based in Islington.

Not just a war

Fotion’s approach to Just War Theory in this brief but cogent book risks reducing JWT to little more than a checklist, so that decisions about whether or not to risk mass death become a kind of box-ticking exercise. This approach has the merit of being logical, mechanical even, but stops Fotion from really sinking his weapons into the ethical conundrums he proposes, so that the book poses more questions than it answers.

On Royalty

It is true, Paxman accepts, that by either an act of parliament or by a revolution, the British monarchy could be dismantled, but we must wait for his final words before we’re really clear of his sentiment: ‘But why bother?’

‘Status Anxiety’ anxiety

The art, the philosophy, the politics, the Christianity, and the bohemia - de Botton’s solutions to status anxiety - are always brought forth in support of his case, never in opposition. Never does de Botton put down something that he disagrees with, and then disagree with it.

How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions

Wheen is not at pains to justify his faith in the Enlightenment; he presents this book as a catalogue of modern errors, not as popular philosophy.