Nigella Lawson

As the daughter of a prominent British politician, Nigella’s childhood was quite different than most. Moving around due to her father’s career, she switched schools five times before she was 18. While her grades suffered, Nigella still managed to get accepted into Oxford, and studied both medieval and modern literature.

After school she pursued a career in journalism, working for the Sunday Times as a deputy literary editor. Moving into freelance writing, Nigella wrote articles for various publications, including The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.

Writing a food column in The Spectator Magazine is what really started her passion for writing about food. With encouragement from her husband, John Diamond, Nigella wrote her first book, ‘How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food,’ which had an amazing success that landed her a television series, ‘Nigella Bites.’

Throughout her career she has suffered greatly, losing her mother, sister, and husband all to cancer. From her experiences with losing loved ones to the disease, Nigella has commented on several occasions that she now closely associates being ‘skinny’ with death. In fact, Nigella sadly recalls her mother explaining to her that since she was dying she could finally eat whatever she wanted and let her figure go because it didn’t matter any more.

Moments like these have made Nigella realize how precious life is and that it’s far better to be happy eating what you want when you’re alive than to be miserable throughout life and only satisfy yourself on the brink of death.