Nigella Lawson
- Category : 1960-births
- Type : GE
- Profile : 6/2 - Role Model / Hermit
- Definition : Single
- Incarnation Cross : LAX Individualism 2
Biography
English journalist, broadcaster, television personality, gourmet, and food writer.
She is the daughter of Nigel Lawson, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Vanessa (née Salmon) Lawson, whose family owned the J. Lyons and Co. food and catering business. 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, she brought out her first cookery book, How to Eat, which sold 300,000 copies and became a best-seller. She wrote her second book in 2000, How to Be a Domestic Goddess, which won her the British Book Award for Author of the Year.
In 1999, she hosted her own cooking show series, Nigella Bites, on Channel 4, accompanied by another best-selling cookbook. Nigella Bites won Lawson a Guild of Food Writers Award; her 2005 ITV daytime chat show Nigella was met with a negative critical reaction and was cancelled after attracting low ratings. She 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 UK, which 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 cookery books worldwide to date.
Lawson was in a relationship with Australian 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. Lawson married art collector Charles Saatchi in September 2003. She filed for divorce, citing ongoing unreasonable behaviour in July 2013 and on 31 July that year, the pair was granted a decree nisi, ending their ten-year marriage. They reached a private financial settlement.