Nigella Lawson

About Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lucy Lawson (born 6 January 1960) is an English journalist, food writer, broadcaster and television presenter. After graduating from Oxford, Lawson worked as a book reviewer and soon became the deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times in 1986. She then began work as a freelance journalist. Lawson wrote her first cookery book, How to Eat, in 1998; this became an instant bestseller and sold 300,000 copies. She followed this up with a second bestseller, How to be a Domestic Goddess in 2000, winning her a British Book Award.

Her career progressed in the United Kingdom in 2000 when she hosted her own Channel 4 cookery programme, Nigella Bites, which was accompanied with another bestseller. She also hosted a less successful chat show on ITV in 2005, which was followed by two successful cookery series on BBC Two. Lawson also enjoys a successful career in the United States where Nigella Feasts has been aired on the Food Network. Her own cookware range is reportedly worth £7 million a year, and she has sold more than 3 million cookery books worldwide.

Her given name originally being thought up by her grandmother, Nigella Lawson was born to Nigel Lawson (now Baron Lawson of Blaby), a Conservative politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet, and the late Vanessa Salmon, a socialite and member of the formerly influential Jewish family who co-owned the Lyons Corner House empire. According to Lawson, Judaism has played no significant part religiously in her life, but she reckons that she has developed a "Jewish character." Lawson's parents divorced in the 1980s. They both remarried; her father to a House of Commons researcher, Therese Maclear, and her mother to philosopher A. J. Ayer. Through the Salmons she is a cousin to the journalist and environmentalist George Monbiot and the solicitor Fiona Shackleton.