Nigella Lucy Lawson is an English food writer and television chef. She is the daughter of Nigel Lawson, Lord Lawson of Blaby, a former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer. Her first cookery book, How to Eat, was published and sold 300,000 copies, becoming a best-seller. In 1999 she hosted her own cooking show series, Nigella Bites, on Channel 4. Her 2005 ITV daytime chat show Nigella met with a negative critical reaction and was cancelled after attracting low ratings.
About Nigella Lawson in brief
Nigella Lucy Lawson is an English food writer and television chef. She is the daughter of Nigel Lawson, Lord Lawson of Blaby, a former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Vanessa Lawson, whose family owned the J. Lyons and Co. food and catering business. Her first cookery book, How to Eat, was published and sold 300,000 copies, becoming a best-seller. In 1999 she hosted her own cooking show series, Nigella Bites, on Channel 4, accompanied by another best-selling cookbook. 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. 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. Lawson is a cousin to both George Monbiot and Fiona Shackleton through the Salmon family. She was educated at several independent schools, among them Ibstock Place, Queen’s Gate School and Godolphin and Latymer School, London. She went on to graduate from the University of Oxford with a second class degree in medieval and modern languages, as a Lady Margaret Hall student. She has a half-brother, Tom, who is currently headmaster at Eastbourne College, and ahalf-sister, Emily; Tom and Emily are her father’s children by his second wife.
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 traced her ancestors to Ashkenazi Jews who originate from eastern Europe and Germany, leaving Lawson surprised not to have Sephardi ancestry, as she had believed. She also uncovered that her maternal great-great-great grandfather, Coenraad Sammes, had fled to England from Amsterdam in 1830 to escape a prison sentence following a conviction for theft. She had to move schools nine times between the ages of 9 and 18, and consequently she described her school years as ‘difficult, disruptive, rude, I suspect, and too highly-strung\”, Lawson reflected in a book about her childhood. Her mother died of liver cancer in Westminster, London at the age of 48. 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, and her mother, in the early 1980s, to philosopher A. J. Ayer. Nigella found some of the judgements and preconceptions that were formed about her frustrating as a child, in part, to the problematic relationship she had with her mother. Her given name was originally suggested by her grandmother, Her family kept homes in Kensington and Chelsea.
You want to know more about Nigella Lawson?
This page is based on the article Nigella Lawson published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 04, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
