Amol Rajan facts for kids

Amol Rajan (born 1983) is an Indian-born British journalist, broadcaster and writer. Rajan is a former adviser to Evgeny Lebedev, Lord Lebedev of Siberia, and was appointed the editor of his newspaper The Independent in 2013. When The Independent announced it was dropping the print edition in February 2016, and continuing as only an online operation, he was retained for a period as "editor-at-large". He was the media editor of BBC News from December 2016 to January 2023, and has been a presenter on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 since 2021. He replaced Jeremy Paxman as the host of University Challenge on 17 July 2023.

Early life and education

Rajan was born in Calcutta, India, to a mother from Poona and a Tamil father from Combaconum. Because of Tamil naming customs, Rajan was born V. Amol, with the V. for his father's given name of Varadarajan. This name was modified to Amol Varadarajan when he came to England and the family later adopted the surname Rajan.

Rajan was three when his family moved to England, and he was raised in Tooting, South West London. The son of Hindu parents, he has said that he has been a "non-believer" in religion since the age of 15 and that he does not believe in God. He was educated at Graveney School in Tooting and graduated with a 2.2 Degree in English from Downing College, Cambridge, where he contributed to Varsity. He was editor of the student newspaper for a term in 2005. At the age of 18, Rajan worked in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) through his gap year.

Career

Rajan was the secondary presenter on The Wright Stuff, the daytime talk show on the Five network, during its 2006–2007 series. He was also a researcher on the programme.

He joined The Independent newspaper in August 2007, where he was over the next few years a news reporter, sports correspondent, columnist, comment editor, and editor of Independent Voices. He has also written a Monday column for the London Evening Standard and restaurant criticism for The Independent on Sunday, and has contributed to The Salisbury Review. The latter publication, according to Rajan, "still publishes writing on politics, history and culture that is among the finest produced in English today. It is frequently offensive, and I cannot say I often agree with its editorial position, but that is all the more reason to read it."

In 2013, aged 29, Rajan became the first non-white editor of a national newspaper in over a century when his Independent appointment was announced. (Rachel Beer was editor of The Sunday Times and The Observer between 1894 and 1902.). For about eighteen months before his appointment, Rajan had been the media advisor to the Independent's proprietor Evgeny Lebedev, the son of Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB economic attaché. Rajan's predecessor as editor of The Independent, Chris Blackhurst, became Group Content Director. When Lebedev announced a move to digital-only in February 2016, with the imminent closure of the print edition, it emerged that Rajan would remain with the company to help facilitate the change in direction. During an October 2019 broadcast Rajan presented for BBC Radio 2 in 2019, journalist Peter Oborne accused Rajan of engaging in "client" and "crony" journalism.

Rajan's role as editor-at-large for The Independent website ended after he was appointed the BBC's first Media Editor in November 2016, and he assumed his new post on 12 December. He has also hosted The Big Debate on the BBC Asian Network.

Since 2017, Rajan has provided holiday cover for several presenters on BBC Radio 2, including Simon Mayo, Jeremy Vine and Zoe Ball. Rajan has occasionally presented The One Show. From May 2017 he presented The Media Show on BBC Radio 4 in succession to Steve Hewlett, although he stepped down from that role when he joined the presenting team of the Today programme in 2021.

In August 2022 it was announced that Rajan would take over from Jeremy Paxman as the host of University Challenge for the 53rd series. Rajan had himself appeared on Christmas University Challenge (a version for celebrity alumni) in December 2020, representing Downing College. He made his first appearance as question-master on 17 July 2023.

In June 2023 Rajan secured an interview for the BBC with former TV presenter Phillip Schofield, the first on TV since Schofield's resignation from ITV in May 2023.

Opinions on the royal family

The Guardian wrote, "Amol Rajan, (...) is a declared republican who once branded the royal family as 'absurd' and the media as a 'propaganda outlet' for the monarchy." In 2021, he publicly apologised for comments made in a 2012 article he wrote for The Independent, in which he described Prince Philip as a "racist buffoon" and Prince Charles (now Charles III) as "scientifically illiterate", and for an open letter he sent to Prince William and his wife Catherine while the two were expecting their first child, in which he described their public role as a "total fraud", the Queen's Diamond Jubilee as a "celebration of mediocrity", and the royal family as a clan "unusually full of fools".

In November 2021, the BBC broadcast The Princes and the Press, a two-part documentary presented by Rajan that explored the relationship between the royal family and the media. He also narrated the BBC podcast Harry, Meghan and the Media, which was released in January 2022.

Personal life

Rajan is a cricket enthusiast, and plays for the Authors XI. His first book, Twirlymen, the Unlikely History of Cricket's Greatest Spin Bowlers, was published by Random House in 2011. In September 2013, he married the academic Charlotte Faircloth, in Cambridge. They live in London and have three children.