Nigella Lawson - Biography, Career

Journalist and cookery writer, born in London, England, UK. The daughter of politician Nigel Lawson, she studied medieval and modern languages at Oxford (1979) and went on to pursue a successful career in journalism, becoming deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times. Working as a freelance writer, she began a restaurant column in The Spectator and later wrote the food column for Vogue. Her first book How to Eat: the pleasures and principles of good food was published to critical acclaim in 1998, and was the basis for her Channel 4 television series, Nigella Bites, with accompanying book (2001). Other bestsellers include How to be a Domestic Goddess (2000, Guild of Food Writers Award), Forever Summer (2002), and Feast (2004). In 2005 she presented a daytime TV chat show, Nigella. Her second husband is Charles Saatchi (married 2003).

Nigella Lucy Lawson (born 6 January 1960) is an English journalist, cookery writer, and television presenter.

Biography

Lawson grew up in a Jewish family; she is the daughter of politician Nigel Lawson (now Lord Lawson) and sister of Dominic Lawson, the former editor of The Sunday Telegraph.

Her mother was socialite Vanessa Salmon, heir to the Lyons Corner House empire;

Lawson attended Godolphin and Latymer School and Westminster School before graduating from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, with a degree in Medieval and Modern Languages.

She was married to journalist John Diamond, with whom she had two children, Cosima and Bruno. (In her newspaper articles she consistently showed a liberal attitude to sexual morality, even coming close to admitting to bisexuality .)

Career

She wrote a restaurant column for the Spectator before becoming deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times in 1986.

She became, among other things, a newspaper-reviewer on BBC1 Sunday-morning TV programme Breakfast with Frost.

She co-hosted, with David Aaronovitch, Channel 4 books discussion programme Booked in the late 1990s, and was an occasional compere of BBC2's press review What the Papers Say, as well as appearing on BBC radio.

Following slots as a culinary sidekick on Nigel Slater's Real Food Show on Channel 4, she has fronted three eponymous TV cookery series broadcast in the UK on the channel: two series of Nigella Bites in 1999-2001, plus a 2001 Christmas special;

Her style of presentation is sometimes gently mocked by comedians and commentators (particularly in a regularly-occurring impersonation of her in the BBC television comedy series Dead Ringers) who perceive that she plays overtly upon her attractiveness and sexuality as a device to engage viewers of her cookery programmes, despite Lawson's repeated denials that she does so.

According to UKTV Food Lawson is worth in excess of £1.7 million.

Her first biography, Nigella Lawson by Gilly Smith, was published by Andre Deutsch in September 2005, but was remaindered within weeks of release.

She took part in the third series of the BBC family-history documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?, in an edition first broadcast on 11 October 2006. Sons, (ISBN 0-471-25750-8, 2002) How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking, Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-6888-9, 2000) Nigella Bites, Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-7287-8, 2001) Forever Summer with Nigella, Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-7381-5, 2002) Forever Summer, Hyperion, (ISBN 1-4013-0016-2, 2003) Feast: Food to Celebrate Life, Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-7521-4, 2004) or Hyperion (ISBN 1-4013-0136-3, 2004)