TO THE millions watching her TV shows or buying her books in the late Nineties and early 2000s, Nigella Lawson was the domestic goddess, the epitome of serenity in her smart West London kitchen, drinking in the applause for hosting yet another sumptuous dinner party.
The reality, inevitably, was very different. Her love of food and desire to give pleasure through her cooking stemmed, Nigella later admitted, from a need to have control and approval.
She described cooking as “a way of strengthening oneself… sustaining yourself is the skill of the survivor.”
And Nigella is definitely a survivor; she's had to be. She was born in January 1960, the daughter of Nigel Lawson, a future Chancellor of the Exchequer who, at the time of Nigella's birth, was still a working journalist, and his first wife Vanessa Salmon, heiress to the J Lyons and Co fortune.
From the outside it appeared to be a gilded life for Nigella and her three siblings, Dominic, Thomasina and Horatia – homes
