Nigella Bites

Nigella Lucy Lawson (born 6 January 1960) is an English food writer and television cook.

She attended Godolphin and Latymer School, London. After graduating from the University of Oxford, where she was a member of Lady Margaret Hall, 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 her first cookery book, ''How to Eat'', was published and sold 300,000 copies, becoming a best-seller. Her second book, ''How to Be a Domestic Goddess'', was published in 2000, winning the British Book Award for Author of the Year.

In 1999 Lawson 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'' 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 8 million cookery books worldwide to date.

Early life

Nigella Lawson was born in 1960 in Wandsworth, London, one of the daughters of Nigel Lawson,Farndale, Nigel
"A woman of extremes"
''The Daily Telegraph'', 14 May 2001. Retrieved 29 September 2007. a business and finance journalist who later became a Conservative MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's government, and his first wife Vanessa Salmon (1936–1985),Peterson, Thane
Chewing the Fat with Nigella Lawson
. ''Bloomberg BusinessWeek'', 19 October 2002. Retrieved 29 September 2007 a socialite and the heiress to the J. Lyons and Co. fortune.Bilmes, Alex
Say what you like about Nigella Lawson
. '' Q'', 2001. Retrieved 29 September 2007. Both her parents were from Jewish families. Her given name was originally suggested by her grandmother.Hattenstone, Sam
Reality bites
''The Guardian'', 2 September 2002. Retrieved 7 February 2008. Her family kept homes in Kensington and Chelsea.O'Brien, Catherine
A modest goddess
. ''The Times'', 13 October 2000. Retrieved 16 July 2008.

Nigel and Vanessa Lawson divorced in 1980, when Nigella was 20. They both remarried: her father that year 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 was at the time a prominent political figure, Nigella found some of the judgements and preconceptions that were formed about her frustrating. 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 her early thirties, in 1993; She has a half-brother, Tom, who is currently headmaster at Eastbourne College, and a half-sister, Emily; Tom and Emily are 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
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