Nigella Lawson is the daughter of former Conservative cabinet minister Nigel Lawson (now Lord Lawson) and the late Vanessa Salmon, socialite and heir to the Lyons Corner House empire, who died of liver cancer in 1985. Lawson attended Godolphin and Latymer School and Westminster School before graduating from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, with a degree in Medieval and Modern Languages.

Lawson wrote a restaurant column for the Spectator and a comment column for The Observer and became deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times in 1986. She became, among other things, a newspaper-reviewer on BBC1 Sunday-morning TV programme Breakfast with Frost. She has also co-hosted, with David Aaronovitch, Channel 4 books discussion programme Booked in the late 1990s, and was an occasional compere of BBC2's press review What the Papers Say, as well as appearing on BBC radio.

Following slots as a culinary sidekick on Nigel Slater's Real Food Show on Channel 4, she has fronted three eponymous TV cookery series broadcast in the UK on the channel. She has had two series of Nigella Bites in 1999-2001, plus a 2001 Christmas special, and Forever Summer with Nigella in 2002, both of which yielded accompanying recipe books.

She was voted author of the year at the 2001 British Book Awards. More than 2 million copies of her books have been sold worldwide. Her latest book is Nigella Express - a guide to delicious, fast food.