Nigella Lawson's Biography

Who is Nigella Lawson?

She is the daughter of former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson and sister of journalist Dominic Lawson.

Her mother was Vanessa Salmon.

Nigella Lawson's food writing began with a restaurant column in The Spectator in 1985. The following year, she became deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times, where she met John Diamond, whom she later married.

It was John Diamond who suggested that she write her first book, How to Eat, which was the precursor to her popular Channel 4 television series, Nigella Bites, which would first bring Nigella Lawson to wide-scale public attention.

Nigella Lawson followed up with a second book, How to be a Domestic Goddess, and also started writing a social affairs column in The Observer.

Her husband John Diamond, who was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997, died in 2001. They had two children, Cosima and Bruno.

John Diamond once said of Nigella Lawson that she was a gay man trapped in a woman's body.

In autumn 2002 Nigella Lawson produced another book and TV series - Forever Summer.

Nigella Lawson's former husband, the advertising guru, Charles Saatchi, did not seem to care that much about her cooking skills. In an interview with Nigella Lawson in Sainsbury's Magazine, she said of Charles Saatchi:

"He loves it when I do cook, but he's really not very interested. I think he would very often rather have a bowl of cereal."

Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi married in 2003.

In 2005, ITV announced a new daytime show, Nigella! Even by Nigella's own reckoning it was not a success. She told the Radio Times, "I now know I can't ever be a presenter, and won't do scripts."

In May 2005, Nigella came fifth in Harpers & Queen's list of the 100 most beautiful women.

At the end of 2006, Nigella Lawson had further TV projects: a series on BBC2 called Nigella's Christmas Kitchen and Nigella Feasts on the Food Network in the USA.

In 2007, Nigella Lawson presented a 13-part series on BBC2, Nigella Express.

On 1 February 2008, Nigella Lawson clarified her intentions about leaving money to her children:

"You might have noticed in the press that I have (apparently) cut my children out of my will, cruel mother that I am. 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 ..."

On 31 July 2013, Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi were granted a divorce.

Previously, Charles Saatchi had been cautioned for assault after being photographed with his hand round Nigella's neck.

In June 2017, it was announced that BBC Two had commissioned a six part series of Nigella: At My Table.

In January 2020, when she turned 60 years old, Nigella Lawson wrote: “My mother died at 48, one of my sisters at 32, and my first husband [journalist and broadcaster John Diamond] at 47; it is a curious thing to be so significantly outstripping them in years.”

In 2020, BBC Two commissioned a new series entitled Nigella Lawson's Cook, Eat, Repeat. In the publicity for the series, Nigella said: "it’s a celebration of the power of food to transform every single day".