Nigella Lawson
Nigella Lawson
Nigella Lucy Lawsonis an English journalist, broadcaster, television personality, gourmet, and food writer. She is the daughter of Nigel Lawson, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and VanessaLawson, whose family owned the J. Lyons and Co. food and catering business. 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,...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth6 January 1960
CityLondon, England
It's true that I wouldn't have written the first book had my sister and mother been alive. It was my way of continuing our conversation. It's also this Jewish thing of naming and remembering people, and I think there is a sense of keeping that side of life going.
In England and America people tend to graze all day long, but I think it's such a waste to be constantly picking at food because you then can't enjoy a proper full meal when the time comes.
I was shy as a child. Now I'm not really shy any more, unless I'm with shy people. I find it contagious and I don't know what to say. But I don't think shyness is something one should feel apologetic about.
I think maybe when you live with someone who is really very ill for a long time, it somehow gives you more of a greedy appetite for life and maybe, yes, you are less measured in your behaviour than you would otherwise be.
I can understand why those primitive desert people think a camera steals their soul. It is unnatural to see yourself from the outside.
Anyway, what makes people look youthful is the quality of their skin and I don't think you can change that.
I think sometimes that people assume because I'm on television I'm an expert, but I think the whole point of what I do is that I'm not and I don't have any training. My approach isn't about a fancy ingredient or style. I cook what I love to eat.
I do think awful things may happen at any moment, so while they are not happening, you may as well be pleased.
But I do think that women who spend all their lives on a diet probably have a miserable sex life: if your body is the enemy, how can you relax and take pleasure? Everything is about control, rather than relaxing, about holding everything in.
I think we all live in a world that is so fast-paced, it's threatening and absolutely saturated with change and novelty and insecurity. Therefore, the ritual of cooking and feeding my family and friends, whoever drops in, is what makes me feel that I'm in a universe that is contained.
It's also quite early on in the relationship to start having babies but obviously because of my age, I can't just say I'll do it in three years' time.
They believe in marriage, which is great, but it's also because of their egotism. Children see everything according to how it impinges on them.
The modern world is personal; people want to know intimate things.
'Statistically, people who have been happily married and then widowed tend to remarry.