Nigella Lucy Lawson (born 6 January 1960) is a British
food writer,
journalist and broadcaster. Lawson was born to
Nigel Lawson, who would become
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Vanessa Salmon, whose family owned the
J. Lyons and Co. empire. 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, Lawson brought out her first cookery book,
How to Eat, which sold 300,000 copies and became a bestseller. She went on to write her second book in 2000,
How to be a Domestic Goddess, winning her the
British Book Award for Author of the Year.
In 2000, she began to host her own cookery series on
Channel 4,
Nigella Bites, which was accompanied with another bestselling cookery book. The
Nigella Bites series won Lawson a Guild of Food Writers Award; however her 2005
ITV daytime chat show was met with a negative critical reaction and was cancelled after attracting low ratings. Lawson 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 United Kingdom. This 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.
Renowned for her
flirtatious manner of presenting, Lawson has been called the "queen of
food porn". She is neither a trained chef nor cook, and has assumed a distinctly relaxed approach to her cooking.
