Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lucy Lawson (born 6 January 1960) is an English food writer, journalist and broadcaster. Lawson is the daughter of Nigel Lawson, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Vanessa Salmon, whose family owned the J. Lyons and Co. empire. After graduating from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, Lawson started work as a book reviewer and restaurant critic, later becoming the deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times in 1986. She then embarked upon a career as a freelance journalist, writing for a number of newspapers and magazines. In 1998, Lawson brought out her first cook book, How to Eat, which sold 300,000 copies and became a best-seller. She went on to write her second book in 2000, How to be a Domestic Goddess, winning her the British Book Award for Author of the Year.

In 1999, she hosted her own cooking show series, Nigella Bites on Channel 4, which was accompanied by another best-selling cook book. The Nigella Bites series won Lawson a Guild of Food Writers Award; her 2005 ITV daytime chat show was met with a negative critical reaction and was cancelled after attracting low ratings. Lawson hosted the Food Network's Nigella Feasts in the United States in 2006 followed by a three-part BBC Two series, Nigella's Christmas Kitchen, in the United Kingdom. This led to the commissioning of Nigella Express on BBC Two in 2007. Her own cookware range, Living Kitchen, has a value of £7 million, and she has sold more than 3 million cook books worldwide.

Renowned for her flirtatious manner of presenting, Lawson has been called the "queen of food porn". She is neither a trained chef nor cook, and has assumed a distinctly relaxed approach to her cooking.

Lawson was in a relationship with human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC until 1988, when he left her for novelist Kathy Lette.[98]

Lawson met journalist John Diamond in 1986, when they were both writing for The Sunday Times.[16] They married in Venice in 1992,[15] and had two children together, both born in Hammersmith, London: Cosima Thomasina (born 1994) and Bruno Paul (born 1996).[2][99] Diamond was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997, and died of the disease in March 2001, aged 47.[26] One of his last messages to Lawson was, "How proud I am of you and what you have become. The great thing about us is that we have made us who we are."[4] His death occurred during the filming of Nigella Bites; "I took a fortnight off. But I'm not a great believer in breaks," Lawson explained,[4] but she did suffer a bout of depression.[3] After his death, Lawson kept all of the press clippings in what she called her "Morbidobox".[4]

Lawson married art collector Charles Saatchi in September 2003,[100] having drawn disapproval when she moved in with him nine months after Diamond's death.[15] Lawson had also come under criticism when it was suggested she started her relationship with Saatchi before Diamond's death.[101][dead link] Saatchi is worth a reputed £100 million,[102] while Lawson is worth £15 million as of 2007, £8 million of which came from book sales.[61] It widely began circulating in the media in early 2008 that Lawson had been quoted as saying her two children should not inherit any of the fortune.[102] She strongly denied these plans in a statement on her personal website, which read, "Of course I have no intention of leaving my children destitute and starving – rather, this is a story that came from a comment I made about my belief that you have to work in order to learn the value of money".[103]

Although both of Lawson's parents are Jewish, Judaism has played no significant part religiously in her life, but she believes that she has developed a somewhat "Jewish character".[3] She was brought up without any religion and she considers herself an atheist.[15][104] In one of her newspaper articles, she has shown a liberal attitude to sexuality ("most [women] simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women").[105] She has said that she often partakes in watching football and is an avid supporter of Chelsea.[106]

Lawson is a supporter of the Lavender Trust which gives support to young women with breast cancer. She first became involved with the charity in 2002 when she baked some lavender cupcakes to be auctioned at a fundraising event, which sold for a significant amount of money. She subsequently featured the recipe in her book, Forever Summer with Nigella.[107]

It was revealed by leaked Whitehall documents in 2003 that Lawson declined an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II in 2001.[108] As the daughter of a life peer, Nigella is entitled to the courtesy title of "The Honourable" and is thus styled The Hon. Nigella Lawson; she does not use this courtesy title.

In December 2008, Lawson caused major controversy and was featured in various newspapers for publicly advocating wearing fur. Lawson also remarked that she would love to kill a bear and then wear it.[109][110]

Lawson was featured as one of the three judges on the special battle of Iron Chef America, titled "The Super Chef Battle", which pitted White House Executive Chef Christeta Comerford and Iron Chef Bobby Flay against super chef Emeril Lagasse and Iron Chef Mario Batali, which was originally broadcast on 3 January 2010.