Early life and education

Lawson was born in Wandsworth, London, one of the daughters of Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, a former Conservative MP, and a former Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's government, and his first wife, Vanessa (née Salmon; 1936-1985), a socialite, "celebrated beauty" and heiress to the J. Lyons and Co. fortune. Her parents both came from Jewish families. Her given name was originally suggested by her grandmother. Her family kept homes in Kensington and Chelsea.

Nigel and Vanessa Lawson divorced in 1980. They both remarried: her father in 1980 to a House of Commons researcher, Therese Maclear (to whom he was married until 2008), and her mother, in the early 1980s, to philosopher A. J. Ayer (they remained married until her mother's death). As her father, Nigel, is a prominent political figure, some of the things she found frustrating were the judgements and pre-conceptions about her. She has attributed her unhappiness as a child, in part, to the problematic relationship she had with her mother.

Lawson's mother died of liver cancer in Westminster, London at the age of 48. Lawson's full-blood siblings are her brother, Dominic, former editor of The Sunday Telegraph, sister Horatia, and sister Thomasina, who died of breast cancer in 1993 during her early thirties; She has a half-brother, Tom, and a half-sister, Emily, her father's children by his second wife. Lawson is a cousin to both George Monbiot and Fiona Shackleton through the Salmon family.

Ancestry

Taking part in the third series of the BBC family-history documentary series, Who Do You Think You Are?, Lawson sought to uncover some of her family's ancestry. She traced her ancestors to Ashkenazi Jews who originate from eastern Europe and Germany, leaving Lawson surprised not to have Iberian-Sephardi ancestry in the family as she had believed. She also uncovered that her maternal great-great-great grandfather, Coenraad Sammes (later Coleman Joseph), had fled to England from Amsterdam in 1830 to escape a prison sentence following a conviction for theft. It was his daughter, Hannah, who married Samuel Gluckstein, father-in-law and business partner of Barnett Salmon and father of Isidore and Montague Gluckstein, who together with Barnett founded J. Lyons and Co. in 1887.

Education

Lawson spent some of her childhood in the Welsh village of Higher Kinnerton. She had to move schools nine times between the ages of 9 and 18, and consequently she described her school years as difficult. "I was just difficult, disruptive, good at school work, but rude, I suspect, and too highly-strung", Lawson reflected. She was educated at several independent schools, at among other places, Ibstock Place School, Queen's Gate School and Godolphin and Latymer School. She worked for many department stores in London, and went on to graduate from the University of Oxford with a degree in medieval and modern languages. She lived in Florence, Italy for a period of time.

Career

Early work

Lawson originally worked in publishing, first taking a job under publisher Naim Attallah. At 23, she began her career in journalism after Charles Moore had invited her to write for The Spectator. Her initial work at the magazine consisted of writing book reviews, after which period she became a restaurant critic there in 1985. She became the deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times in 1986 at the age of 26.

She occasionally drifted into the public's eye, attracting publicity in 1989 when she admitted voting for Labour in an election as opposed to her father's Conservative Party, and then criticised Margaret Thatcher in print. Regarding her political relationship with her father, Lawson has stated, "My father would never expect me to agree with him about anything in particular and, to be honest, we never talk about politics much."

After her stint at The Sunday Times, she embarked upon a freelance writing career, realising that "I was on the wrong ladder. I didn't want to be an executive, being paid to worry rather than think". In the United Kingdom, she wrote for The Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard, The Observer and The Times Literary Supplement, and penned a food column for Vogue and a makeup column for The Times Magazine, as well as working with Gourmet and Bon Appétit in the United States. After two weeks working on Talk Radio in 1995, Lawson was sacked after she had stated her shopping was done for her, which was deemed incompatible with the radio station's desired "common touch".

1998-2002: Cook book writing and Nigella Bites

Lawson had an established sense of cooking from her childhood, having had a mother who enjoyed cooking. She conceived the idea of writing a cookbook after she observed a dinner party host in tears because of an unset crème caramel. How to Eat (1998), featuring culinary tips on preparation and saving time, sold 300,000 copies in the UK. The Sunday Telegraph dubbed it "the most valuable culinary guide published this decade."

Its successor, How to be a Domestic Goddess (2000), focuses primarily on baking. Of this second bestseller, The Times wrote of Lawson's book, that it "is defined by its intimate, companionable approach. She is not issuing matronly instructions like Delia; she is merely making sisterly suggestions". Lawson rejected feminist criticism of her book, adding that "ome people did take the domestic goddess title literally rather than ironically. It was about the pleasures of feeling like one rather than actually being one." The book sold 180,000 copies in four months, and won Lawson the title of Author of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2001, fending off competition from authors such as J. K. Rowling. How to Eat and How to be a Domestic Goddess were published in the U.S. in 2000 and 2001. As a result of the book's success, The Observer took her on as a social affairs columnist.

Lawson next hosted her own cooking show television series, Nigella Bites, which ran from 1999 to 2001 on Channel 4, followed by a Christmas special in 2001. Victor Lewis-Smith, a critic usually known for his biting comments, praised Lawson for being "formidably charismatic". The first series of Nigella Bites averaged 1.9 million viewers, and won her the Television Broadcast of the Year at the Guild of Food Writers Awards and the Best Television Food Show at the World Food Media Awards in 2001. The show yielded an accompanying best-selling recipe book, also called Nigella Bites, for which Waterstone's book stores reported UK sales of over 300,000. The book won a W H Smith Award for Lifestyle Book of the Year.

The Nigella Bites series, which was filmed in her home in west London, was later broadcast on American television channels E! and Style Network. Lawson said of the US release, "In the UK, my viewers have responded to the fact I'm trying to reduce, not add to, their burden and I'm looking forward to making that connection with Style viewers across the US". Overall, Lawson was well received in the United States. Those who did criticise her often suggested she was too flirtatious; a commentator from The New York Times said, "Lawson's sexy roundness mixed with her speed-demon technique makes cooking dinner with Nigella look like a prelude to an orgy". The book of Nigella Bites became the second bestselling cook book of Christmas 2002 in America. The series was followed by Forever Summer with Nigella in 2002 on Channel 4, the concept being, "that you cook to make you still feel as though you're on holiday".

In 2002 she also began to write a fortnightly cooking articles for The New York Times, and brought out a profitable line of kitchenware, called the Living Kitchen range, which is sold by numerous retailers. Her range's value has continued to grow, starting at an estimated £2 million in 2003.

2003-2006: Nigella Feasts and BBC contract

In November 2003, Lawson oversaw the menu and preparations for a lunch hosted by Tony Blair at Downing Street for George W. Bush and his wife during their state visit to the UK. Laura Bush is said to be a fan of Lawson's recipes and once included one of her soups as the starter for the 2002 presidential Christmas dinner. Lawson's fifth book, Feast: Food that Celebrates Life, released in 2004, made sales worth £3 million. London's Evening Standard wrote that the book "works both as a practical manual and an engrossing read. ... Nobody else writes so openly about the emotional significance of food." Lawson appeared frequently on American television in 2004, conducting cookery slots on talk shows such as The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

In the UK in 2005, Lawson started to host a daytime television chat show on ITV1 called Nigella, on which celebrity guests joined her in a studio kitchen. The first episode debuted with a disappointing 800,000 viewers. The show was met with a largely negative critical reaction, and after losing 40% of its viewers in the first week, the show was cancelled. She later commented to Radio Times that on her first show, she was almost too frightened to come out of her dressing room. Lawson added that having to pretend to be interested in the lives of the celebrities on her show became too much of an effort.

Her third food-based television series, called Nigella Feasts, debuted on the USA's Food Network in Autumn 2006 for a 13-week run. Time magazine wrote a favorable review of the show; "the real appeal of Feasts ... is her unfussy, wry, practical approach to entertaining and quality comfort food. ... between the luscious camera shots and Lawson's sensual enjoyment of eating, Feasts will leave you wishing for an invite".

Lawson was next signed to BBC Two to host a three-part cookery show entitled Nigella's Christmas Kitchen, which began on 6 December 2006 and aired weekly. The first two episodes secured the second highest ratings of the week for BBC Two, with the first episode debuting with a strong 3.5 million. The final episode went on to become the top show on BBC Two the week that it was aired. Nigella's Christmas Kitchen won Lawson a second World Food Media Award in 2007. Her influence as a food commentator was also demonstrated in late 2006, when after she had lauded goose fat as being an essential ingredient for Christmas, sales percentages of the product increased significantly in the UK. Waitrose and Tesco both stated that goose fat sales had more than doubled, as well as Asda's goose fat sales increasing by 65% from the previous week. Similarly, after she advised using prunes in a recipe on Nigella's Christmas Kitchen, Waitrose had increased sales of 30% year on year.

2007-2009: Nigella Express and Nigella's Christmas

Nigella's Christmas Kitchen led to the commissioning of a 13-part cookery series entitled Nigella Express. She said "I wouldn't describe them as junk". The show became another ratings success and one of BBC Two's top-rated shows each week. The first episode debuted with 2.85 million viewers, a high percentage above the channel's slot average. The second episode's viewing figures rose to 3.3 million, and the series peaked at 3.4 million on 22 October 2007.

Her influence with the public was again demonstrated when sales of Riesling wine increased by 30% in the UK after she had incorporated it into her Coq au Riesling recipe on Nigella Express. In December 2007 she appeared on BBC's The Graham Norton Show and revealed that she had once eaten 30 pickled eggs for a £1,000 bet, saying "How stupid to challenge me! I made them all put their money on the table in front of me. The next day I had scrambled eggs for breakfast."

Lawson came under criticism when viewers complained that she had gained weight since the debut episode of the series. The Guardian however, noted, "the food matches her appearance - flawless, polished and sexy". The rights to Nigella Express were sold to Discovery Asia. The series was nominated at the 35th Daytime Emmy Awards in the United States for Outstanding Lifestyle Program, and Lawson herself for the Outstanding Lifestyle Host.

The accompanying book to Nigella Express was released in the UK in September 2007, US in November 2007, and in Australia in 2008. Sharing the same name as the television series, the book became another best-seller in the UK, and was outselling television chef Jamie Oliver by 100,000 copies, according to Waterstone's. It was reported that over 490,000 copies had been sold by mid-December in the UK. Furthermore, the book was number one for a period on Amazon UK's bestselling books, and was ninth on their overall list of Christmas bestsellers in any category. Paul Levy of The Guardian wrote that the tone of the recipes was "just right. One of the appealing things about Nigella's brief introductions to each of them is that she thinks not just as cook, but as eater, and tells you whether they're messy, sticky or fussy." In January 2008, Lawson was estimated to have sold more than 3 million books worldwide. Her Christmas book was released in October 2008 and the television show in December of the same year. An American edition of the book "Nigella Christmas" with a different cover photograph was released in November 2009 with an accompanying book tour of several US cities and a special on the USA's Food Network.

2010-2014, Nigellissima and The Taste

Lawson was featured as one of the three judges on a special battle of Iron Chef America, titled "The Super Chef Battle", which pitted White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford and Iron Chef Bobby Flay against chef Emeril Lagasse and Iron Chef Mario Batali. This episode was originally broadcast on 3 January 2010. Lawson's cookbook Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home (2010) is a tie-in with the TV series "Nigella Kitchen." This was shown in the UK and on the Food Network in the United States.

Nigellissima: Instant Italian Inspiration was released in 2012. The 8 part TV series entitled Nigellissima was broadcast by the BBC. Nigella Lawson obtained work experience in Italy during her gap year.

Lawson travelled to the United States in 2013 and starred alongside Anthony Bourdain in the reality cooking show The Taste. The UK version of the show began airing on 7 January 2014 on Channel 4. Lawson was granted a visa to travel to the United States and traveled there for a continuation of the series. In 2014 Lawson was hired by a chocolate company to appear in an advertisement, the advertisement was filmed in New Zealand in May for a local confection manufacturer Whittaker's.

2015-, Simply Nigella, Eurovision and MasterChef Australia

The UK and US series of The Taste were both completed and in autumn 2015 Lawson began "Simply Nigella", a BBC 2 show showing viewers how to cook a range of dishes that were simple to cook and similar to what viewers would make themselves. Lawson featured comfort food and dishes that were quick to prepare. She featured food that would make viewers feel better while they cooked it and also when they ate it.

On the 23rd May, Lawson was spokesperson for the United Kingdom revealing the voting results during the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2015. Lawson commented, "Yes, it's true. Oui, c'est vrai. Ja, das ist wahr."

It was reported on 18 January 2016, that Lawson would make a return to Australian television, joining series 8 of MasterChef Australia as a guest judge, alongside the returning judges.

Presenting style and image

Though Lawson has enjoyed a successful career in cookery, she is not a trained chef, and does not like being referred to as a "celebrity chef". Furthermore, she does not see herself as a cook or an expert in her field. Throughout Lawson's television programmes, she emphasises that she cooks for her own pleasure, for enjoyment, and that she finds cooking therapeutic. When deciding upon which recipes to feature in her books, she takes the view of the eater, stating, "If it's something I don't want to carry on eating once I'm full, then I don't want the recipe ... I have to feel that I want to cook the thing again".

Lawson has adopted a casual approach to cooking, stating, "I think cooking should be about fun and family. ... I think part of my appeal is that my approach to cooking is really relaxed and not rigid. There are no rules in my kitchen." One editor, highlighting the technical simplicity of Lawson's recipes, noted that "her dishes require none of the elaborate preparation called for by most TV chefs".

Lawson has become renowned for her flirtatious manner of presenting, although she argues "It's not meant to be flirtatious. ... I don't have the talent to adopt a different persona. It's intimate, not flirtatious". The perceived overt sexuality of her presentation style has led to Lawson's being called the "queen of food porn". Many commentators have alluded to Lawson's attractiveness, and she was once named as one of the world's most beautiful women. She has been referred to as "stunningly beautiful, warm, honest, likeable and amazingly normal", as well as being described as having "flawless skin, perfect white teeth, a voluptuous body, ample height and lots of lush, brown hair". Nigella Lawson has been voted, Sexiest Celebrity Chef. The media have also noted Lawson's ability to engage with both male and female viewers; The Guardian wrote, "Men love her because they want to be with her. Women love her because they want to be her". The chef, Gary Rhodes, spoke out against Lawson by suggesting that her viewers are attracted to her smile rather than the cooking itself. Despite often being labelled as a domestic goddess, she insists that she exhibits very few of the qualities associated with the title.

One critic summarised, "her descriptions of food can be a tangle of adjectives".

Personal life

Relationships and children

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

Lawson met journalist John Diamond in 1986, when they were both writing for The Sunday Times. They married in Venice in 1992 and have a daughter, Cosima and a son, Bruno. Diamond was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997 and died in March 2001, aged 47. 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." 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; she suffered a bout of depression following the funeral. After Diamond's death, Lawson kept all of the press clippings in what she called her "Morbidobox".

Charles Saatchi

Lawson married art collector Charles Saatchi in September 2003. Lawson was not always happy for unspecified reasons and admitted in 2012 that she sometimes said, "Please God, get me through the ordeal that is today."

In June 2013, photographs were published by The Sunday People of Lawson being grabbed around the neck by Saatchi, during an argument outside a London seafood restaurant. According to a witness, Lawson was very distressed by the incident. Saatchi later described the pictures as showing only a "playful tiff" and his trying to emphasise a point. After a police investigation of the incident, Saatchi was cautioned for assault, and it was reported that Lawson had left the family home. Lawson said in court Saatchi subjected her to "intimate terrorism", that he threatened to finish her unless she cleared him in court. Subsequently while giving evidence Lawson claimed casual cruelty and controlling behaviour by Saatchi which made her unhappy and drove her to occasional drug use. She cited as examples that Saatchi prevented her entertaining at home and punished her for going to a birthday party of a woman friend. She was not beaten but was left emotionally scarred.

Saatchi announced his divorce from Lawson in early July, stating that he had "clearly been a disappointment to Nigella during the last year or so" and the couple had "become estranged and drifted apart". Lawson made no public comment in response; however, court papers showed that it was Lawson who filed for divorce, citing ongoing unreasonable behaviour. On 31 July 2013, seven weeks after the incident, the pair was granted a decree nisi, ending their ten-year marriage. They reached a private financial settlement.

Assistants' fraud trial

On 27 November 2013, a trial of the former couple's two personal assistants, Italian-born sisters Elisabetta and Francesca Grillo, began in R v Grillo and Grillo. The Grillos were accused of fraudulently using the credit cards of Saatchi's private company. During court proceedings in early December, the sisters claimed that Lawson had permitted their use of the credit cards in exchange for their silence regarding her drug use. Questions regarding Lawson's drug use were allowed by the judge as part of the sisters' "bad character" defence. Lawson admitted to taking cocaine and cannabis but denied she had been addicted, stating, "I found it made an intolerable situation tolerable." On 20 December 2013, the two sisters were acquitted. Scotland Yard confirmed that Lawson would not be the subject of an investigation based on claims made in court that she consumed cocaine. The decision will be reviewed if new evidence comes to light.

It has been alleged that Charles Saatchi started a smear campaign against Lawson in the British media, through PR man Richard Hillgrove, relating to her drug use that began even before the trial was over. Lawyers for Lawson have demanded that Hillgrove remove comments about her made in his blog. By contrast Nigella Lawson claimed in court that ending her marriage to Saatchi and creating tolerable conditions for herself and her family was the answer. Since she freed herself from, "a brilliant but brutal man." Lawson maintains she is "totally cannabis, cocaine, any drug, free."

Interests and beliefs

Saatchi was worth a reputed £100 million. 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.

Although both of Lawson's parents are Jewish, her upbringing was non observant and Lawson herself identifies as an atheist. In one of her newspaper articles, she has shown a liberal attitude to sexuality ("most simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women.")

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.

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

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

Lawson has stated that she believes cooking is "a metaphor for life", in the sense that "When you cook, you need structure but just as importantly you need to be able to loosen up and go with the flow you must not strive for perfection but, rather, acknowledge your mistakes and work out how you can rectify them". She has described cooking as "a way of strengthening oneself", in the sense that "being able to sustain oneself is the skill of the survivor".

Television credits

Year	Programme	Episodes	Duration (including advertisement breaks)
1999	Nigella Bites	5 episodes, Series 1	30 minutes
2001	Nigella Bites	10 episodes, Series 2	30 minutes
2001	Nigella Bites Christmas Special	1 episode	60 minutes
2002	Forever Summer	8 episodes	30 minutes
2005	Nigella	20 episodes	60 minutes
2006	Nigella Feasts	13 episodes	30 minutes
2006	Nigella's Christmas Kitchen	3 episodes, Series 1	30 minutes
2007	Nigella Express	13 episodes	30 minutes
2008	Nigella's Christmas Kitchen	3 episodes, Series 2	30 minutes
2009	Top Chef	1 episode	42 minutes
2010	Iron Chef America: Super Chef Battle	1 episode	120 minutes
2010	Nigella Kitchen	13 episodes	30 minutes
2011	MasterChef Australia Season 3	1 episode	60 minutes
2012	Nigellissima	7 episodes	30 minutes
2013	The Taste	8 episodes, Series 1	60 minutes
2014	The Taste	8 episodes, Series 2	60 minutes
2014—	The Taste	7 episodes, Series 3	60 minutes
2014—	The Taste UK	10 episodes, Series 1	60 minutes
2014	Modern Family	Season 6, Episode 7; Three Turkeys	30 minutes
2015	Eurovision Song Contest 2015	Final (Spokesperson for the United Kingdom)
2015	Simply Nigella	6 episodes & 1 Christmas Special	30 minutes (regular) - 60 minutes (Christmas Special)
2016	MasterChef Australia Series 8'	70 episodes	60 minutes

Awards

• 2000: British Book Award - Author of the Year for How to be a Domestic Goddess
• 2001: WH Smith Book Award - How To Be A Domestic Goddess shortlisted for Lifestyle Book of the Year
• 2001: Guild of Food Writers - Television Broadcast of the Year for Nigella Bites
• 2001: World Food Media Award - Gold Ladle Best Television Food Show for Nigella Bites
• 2002: WH Smith Book Awards - Lifestyle Book of the Year for Nigella Bites
• 2007: World Food Media Award - Gold Ladle Best Food And/Or Drink Television Show for Nigella's Christmas Kitchen

Bibliography

• How to Eat: Pleasures and Principles of Good Food, Chatto and Windus, John Wiley & Sons, (ISBN 0-471-25750-8, 1998)
• 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)
• Feast: Food to Celebrate Life, Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-7521-4, 2004) or Hyperion (ISBN 1-4013-0136-3, 2004)
• Nigella Lawson, A Biography, Gilly Smith (ISBN 1-56980-299-8, 2006)
• Nigella Express, Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-8184-2, 2007)
• Nigella Christmas, Chatto and Windus (ISBN 0-7011-8322-5, 2008)
• Nigella Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home, Chatto and Windus (ISBN 0-7011-8460-4, 2010)
• Nigellissima: Instant Italian Inspiration, Chatto and Windus (ISBN 0-7011-8733-6, 2012)
• Simply Nigella, Chatto and Windus (ISBN 978-0-7011-8935-8, 2015)

[ Source: Wikipedia ]