At approximately one P.M. on Sunday, June 9, 2013, a self-described paparazzo, who identifies himself only as “Jean-Paul,” parked his car across the street from Scott’s, a tony restaurant on Mount Street, in London’s Mayfair neighborhood. He had spotted Charles Saatchi—the wealthy advertising executive, champion of emerging British artists, and founder of the renowned Saatchi Gallery—dining on the terrace with Nigella Lawson, his wife of nearly 10 years and the author and television personality known by her own international brand, “the Domestic Goddess.” They were there, at Saatchi’s favorite restaurant, celebrating his 70th birthday.

The couple, eating outside despite an overcast day with temperatures hovering in the mid-50s, tolerated the cool air to accommodate Saatchi’s chain-smoking habit. So, Jean-Paul—who insists that his real name not be revealed and who prides himself on never taking photos of anyone eating (“Not dignified,” he says)—sat patiently in his car and perused seven Sunday newspapers, scanning them for his own photos that might have been published without his consent, while he waited for the couple to leave the restaurant so he could take Lawson’s picture.

Half an hour after his arrival across the street from Scott’s, Jean-Paul glanced up from his newspapers and saw a startling image: Saatchi’s left hand was wrapped around Lawson’s throat. As Jean-Paul described it to me, “I saw her lurch violently backwards. I thought Charles was demonstrating something. It lasted about 30 seconds. Then he did it a second time, and it was so violent, with such force, that her head snapped backwards. . . . I was taking pictures the whole time.”

In all, Jean-Paul snapped nearly 1,000 photographs at the restaurant over about 27 minutes. Some of the photos showed Saatchi’s fingers poking in and around Lawson’s nostrils; others showed that, while Saatchi grabbed Lawson’s throat with his left hand, his right hand was, bizarrely, on the table, holding hers in what appeared to be a loving gesture.

After the altercation that day at Scott’s, Saatchi paid the bill and returned by taxi with his wife to their home on Shawfield Street. For the next week, the couple lived together at their home in Chelsea and entertained friends at two dinner parties—one, ironically, with an executive of the Mail, which would become a leader in reporting the saga, and Lawson’s brother, Dominic, along with his wife, Rosa Monckton (who had been one of Princess Diana’s closest friends).

Then, exactly one week after Saatchi’s birthday lunch, Jean-Paul’s photos were published in the British tabloid Sunday People. Although it was reported he was paid approximately $22,000 for a 24-hour period of exclusivity, Jean-Paul told me that amount is incorrect, declining to comment on a specific figure, only describing it as a “substantial amount in a recession-hit business.” The photos drew about 10 million clicks in a single day. Once the exclusivity period expired, he sold the photos to dozens of other outlets around the world.

The public reaction to what has facetiously come to be known to some as “the Saatchi handshake” was immediate and, for Saatchi, devastating. Sandra Horley, chief executive of Refuge, a U.K. charity providing support for female victims of domestic violence, said, “If anything positive is to come of this incident, it is that there has been a massive public response which has generated a nationwide discussion about domestic violence.” The hot-button topic was discussed in newspaper columns and on radio and TV by experts and politicians, including members of Parliament. Even Mia Farrow shared her opinion on Twitter: “If you saw a woman being choked by a man what would you do? Yesterday a restaurant full of Londoners did nothing to help #NigellaLawson.”

Photo Bomb

Within three weeks of the incident at Scott’s, Lawson moved her belongings out of the couple’s $22.5 million, seven-bedroom Chelsea mansion (which has the cheeky name “The House” printed above the front security intercom and camera), along with her two teenage children from her first marriage, Mimi and Bruno Diamond. Someone close to Lawson says that when Lawson herself saw the photos in the newspaper—and the expression of terror in her eyes—she decided this was the time to escape. Her children endorsed the move because they disliked Saatchi and his behavior toward their mother.

Pointedly, it was Saatchi who ordered Lawson to “pack your belongings and go” after she refused, on the advice of Mark Hutchinson, her London-based representative, to make a statement in Saatchi’s support. Saatchi told a friend that if Lawson felt she was “trapped in a terrible marriage . . . she was a great actress.” “I may be a shit,” Saatchi told this person, “but I’m not a shit who harms his wife.”

One day after the photos were published, Saatchi voluntarily accepted what is known in the U.K. as a “police caution” for assault (which does not result in a criminal record), reportedly after five hours of questioning at the Charing Cross police station. Earlier that day, though, he had ignited the public-relations firestorm by being quoted dismissing the photographed incident as a “playful tiff” in the London Evening Standard, where he writes a regular column on art: “The pictures are horrific but give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place.”

With the exception of two phone calls, Lawson cut off all communication with Saatchi after vacating the couple’s house, despite constant pleas and messages sent through friends and family. Even Phoebe, Saatchi’s 19-year-old daughter, from his previous marriage to Kay Saatchi, got caught up in the maelstrom. Phoebe told me, “Nigella has not phoned me since the day she left the house, the Sunday the newspaper ran.” Phoebe found this to be especially hurtful, since she had been close to her stepmother and to Lawson’s two children.

Four weeks after the incident at Scott’s, Saatchi announced in The Mail on Sunday, “I am sorry to announce that Nigella Lawson and I are getting divorced”—a declaration that apparently blindsided her.

Saatchi and Lawson were granted a quick divorce, after a 70-second hearing attended by neither, at the High Court in London on July 31, but only, in the end, after Lawson filed the petition on the grounds of his “unreasonable behaviour.” Saatchi, according to a close source, had hoped the mere threat of divorce would bring her back to their home.

Less than a week later, a digital edition of a tongue-in-cheek advice book by Charles Saatchi was published, in which he answered questions from journalists and readers. The title: Be the Worst You Can Be: Life’s Too Long for Patience & Virtue. In it, he was asked, “Do you believe in love at first sight?” Saatchi replied, “It is possible, but it pays to take a second look. Love may indeed be blind, but marriage is often an eye-opener.”

Although the couple is divorced with neither property nor money in dispute (despite their combined wealth of some $250 million), the split has turned into one of the most bitter and public marital disputes of the century. The battle between two of Britain’s most high-profile figures has led to an inevitable dissection of their marriage, their behavior, and their personalities.

One person who knows the couple said, “Everything was always on his terms. He’s very difficult to live with.” A person who describes herself as a former friend of Lawson’s says that there is another, less public side to England’s kitchen darling, too. “She was very tense, anxious, not easy to be around,” and “she has the ability to delete people from her life.”

On November 26, a new and unexpected series of revelations about the couple’s dispute began coming to light. In a criminal case brought against two Italian sisters, Elisabetta (Lisa) and Francesca Grillo—who worked for Saatchi and Lawson as personal assistants and were charged with defrauding Saatchi out of around $1.1 million over four years—accusations relating to Lawson surfaced. As part of the presentation of preliminary evidence in the case, which was originally opened when the sisters were charged in March, Judge Robin Johnson read part of an e-mail that Saatchi had written to Lawson on October 10, nearly four months after she had moved out.

In its entirety, the e-mail read, “Nigella, I was sent [the Grillos’ ‘Witness Statements’] by a newspaper, and I could only laugh at your sorry depravity. Of course now the Grillos will get off on the basis that you, Mimi and Bruno where [sic] so off your heads on drugs, you allowed the sisters to spend whatever they liked. And yes, I believe every word the Grillos have said, who, after all, only stole money. You Higella, on the other hand, poisoned your children with drugs, and trashed their lives. But I’m sure it was all great fun, and now everything is perfect—bravo, you have become a celebrity hostess on a global TV game show. And you got the Pass you desired, free toheartily [sic] enjoy all the drugs you want, forever. Classy!”

The e-mail tipped off a cascade of speculation, and the worldwide press gleefully pounced on the nickname “Higella.” The theory raised at trial is that Lawson, in order to keep the Grillos silent about her alleged drug use, let the sisters spend as much as they wanted on their company credit cards from a Saatchi business account. (The Grillos pleaded not guilty.)

Anthony Metzer, a barrister representing Elisabetta Grillo, told the court, “The bad character application relates to Miss Lawson’s alleged taking of class A and class B drugs and her unauthorized use of prescription drugs. This is a matter highly relative to the defense because, in a nutshell, we respectfully submit she had a guilty secret from her husband.” Jane Carpenter, representing the prosecution, said, “This is a totally scurrilous account which has been raised by the defense, and the timing [of the drug allegations] is no coincidence at all.”

How did the e-mail, supposedly a private communication to Lawson from Saatchi, come into the possession of the court? According to someone close to Lawson, her team turned it over to the Crown prosecutors in order to limit the scope of questioning in the trial to the fraud charges. They intended to demonstrate Saatchi’s venom toward his ex-wife, intimating that he was trying to introduce a sideshow to the case: her alleged drug use. Clearly, the strategy failed miserably, since the sideshow began the moment the e-mail was read in open court.

The Odd Couple

It was a spectacular and very public ending to a marriage that had always struck friends and onlookers as peculiar. Lawson’s first husband, journalist and broadcaster John Diamond, was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997. One of Diamond’s passions, which sustained him through his four-year illness, was playing Scrabble. Diamond played—sometimes for as much as $8,000 in an afternoon, according to some sources—in a private room at Montpeliano, an Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge. Among the other high-profile players was Charles Saatchi. It was after one of these competitive matches that Diamond brought Saatchi, then still married to Kay, home to meet his family.

Saatchi is, by all accounts, a charismatic, if sometimes aloof, man. One friend calls him “dominating, demanding, irresistible.” He made his fortune at Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising company that he and his brother, Maurice, had established in the 1970s. Saatchi’s business dealings moved away from advertising in the 1980s, however, culminating in his effective dismissal from Saatchi & Saatchi in 1995 by an activist investor. By that point, he had developed interests in other fields, primarily art—having established the Saatchi Gallery in 1985. (In 1991, Saatchi was also one of the principal investors who bought Spy magazine from its founders, including current V.F. editor Graydon Carter.)

Diamond died from his disease at age 47, on March 2, 2001. Sixteen days after his death, photographs of Saatchi and Lawson were published in The Mail on Sunday, with the newspaper reporting that Lawson “has become ‘very close’ ” to Saatchi. Ironically, the photos were taken by Jean-Paul, the same paparazzo who would record the dissolution of their marriage more than a decade later. “I took those photos 10 days after John Diamond died,” he told me. “I saw them earlier than that, but I couldn’t get the pictures. When I finally got them, they appeared very relaxed with each other.”

Although eyebrows were raised when Saatchi and Lawson became a couple so soon after Diamond’s death, few outwardly begrudged their obvious happiness when they married, in September 2003. They enjoyed traveling, usually to Tuscany; sometimes Saatchi chartered a yacht and they visited a secluded resort on Sardinia. Friends described them as “loving” and “tactile” toward each other. And yet, there was a dichotomy that became clear in their marriage early on: “She loves publicity,” one friend told me, “and he hates it.” Lawson, in keeping with her public persona, enjoys socializing. He avoids parties, even those he hosts, such as the opening, in October 2008, of the Saatchi Gallery’s third location, which is only a short walk from his home. He prefers to stay in and watch DVDs of American TV series, such as Homeland, or Formula One races and soccer matches.

And Saatchi had a temper. One person who worked at Saatchi & Saatchi told me, “He used to throw desks, chairs, and telephones. But as quick as he was to explode, he was quick to apologize.” Those on the receiving end of his tirades would generally receive a large floral arrangement soon after. Kay Saatchi once said of her ex-husband in an interview, “When the light shines on you, he is charming and amazing and special. I know, because he shone it on me.” But she warned, “Then the light fades and there is darkness.”

By all accounts, though, in the early years of the couple’s marriage there was much joy in their homes, including the last one, a converted factory which Saatchi bought in early 2010. Friends said “The House” featured works of art that changed every few months, sometimes in conjunction with whomever the nearby Saatchi Gallery was exhibiting. Artists on display have included Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, and Jake and Dinos Chapman.

The couple moved there from Eaton Square, in the Belgravia section of London, after a bitter dispute with an upstairs neighbor whose adjoining flat was undergoing extensive renovations. It was reported that Saatchi had his own workmen take down the scaffolding because it interfered with his view. “Charles hated the noise and he bought the new place in record time,” a friend said. When Saatchi and Lawson hosted dinners—with guests such as Salman Rushdie, Mick Jagger, and Mike Nichols—he would sometimes appear distracted, disinterested, or brooding. Once Saatchi excused himself from a dinner gathering he was hosting and disappeared for more than 30 minutes. He returned sipping from a Starbucks cup.

Center Court

As to what happened that day at Scott’s: there is an inevitably *Rashomon-*like quality to reconstructing it, depending on whom you asked, and when. Saatchi told someone close to him that the argument at Scott’s on June 9 centered on the professional trajectory of Mimi. Mimi had secured a job as an intern at the weekly newsmagazine The Economist. Lawson wanted her daughter to attend university. At lunch, Saatchi said he didn’t understand why Mimi should waste her time as a student when she had a chance to continue to impress her superiors at The Economist and have an advantage over those who would graduate with little experience and no job prospects.

At one point during the increasingly heated back-and-forth, according to this source, Lawson excused herself from the table, went inside the restaurant, and walked down a flight of stairs to the ladies’ room. Saatchi told this person that when Lawson returned to the table he felt, to his dismay and frustration, she was “unable to focus.” This person said Saatchi was “holding [her] neck to try to get her attention. He was saying, ‘Listen to me. I feel very passionate about this. I think it’s great they love her at The Economist.’ ”

That’s one version. At the fraud trial for the Grillo sisters, Lawson told the court another. She said that she was looking at a baby outside Scott’s and told Saatchi that she looked forward to being a grandmother. Saatchi grabbed her throat, saying that he was the only one she should be concerned with. (Jean-Paul told me following Lawson’s testimony that he hadn’t noticed a baby or a baby carriage during the time Saatchi and Lawson were having lunch.)

On November 29, called to give testimony in the Grillo trial, Saatchi found himself in a courtroom crammed with reporters live-tweeting and dashing from the newsroom to file reports. He testified that he was “utterly heartbroken” about his divorce and that, despite what he wrote in that October 10 e-mail and what the Grillos alleged, he had no proof that Lawson ever used cocaine or any drugs. He said, “I have never, never seen any evidence of Nigella taking any drug whatsoever. I want to be helpful, but I genuinely have no real knowledge at all.” He told the court he still adores Lawson and “I’m brokenhearted to have lost her.”

In one of his answers, Saatchi testified, “Are you asking me whether I think Nigella truly was off her head? Not for a second. Over this whole period, she was writing books very successfully and appearing on television shows very successfully.”

Saatchi was also asked under oath about what had happened at Scott’s in June. He responded in such a way as to distance himself from the accusations leveled in his e-mail: “I was not gripping, strangling, or throttling her. I was holding her head by the neck to make her focus. Can we be clear? . . . Was it about her drug use? No.”

On December 4, five days after Saatchi completed his testimony, Lawson arrived in court to deliver hers. Flanked by seven police officers and dressed entirely in black except for a white shirt collar, Lawson was an extraordinary witness—albeit one who drew more attention for the revelations about herself than for the findings in the case.

Lawson testified about the Grillos, who had worked for her for more than a decade, with compassion but disapproval for their acts. “I do not believe Lisa to be a bad person,” Lawson said. “I believe her to not have a very strong moral compass.” But the revelations that riveted the packed courtroom had to do with her drug use.

Lawson admitted she had used cocaine on six occasions with Diamond as he struggled with his fatal illness. “I did not have a drug problem,” she told the court. “I had a life problem.” Lawson went on to even crack a joke that habitual users of cocaine “are a lot thinner than I am.” She testified that she used cocaine again only once, in July 2010, at the suggestion of a friend, when she was having a “very, very difficult time” caused by Saatchi’s “intimate terrorism.” Lawson said she felt “isolated, in fear and just unhappy.” She also admitted to using cannabis as a way of “freeing myself from a brilliant but brutal man.” Lawson added, “I found it made an intolerable situation tolerable. I am now totally . . . drug free.”

Lawson testified that Saatchi (whom she referred to as “Mr. Saatchi”) told her that, “if I didn’t go back and clear his name, he would destroy me. And so he started spreading false allegations of drug use, particularly the awful incident at Scott’s. And I felt that his way of getting things out was to use this case. And in September, a new addition to the defendants’ defense statements came out with some of the drug allegations which Mr. Saatchi had menaced me with in August. I said, ‘What drug allegations? There are not going to be any.’ . . . I felt this would not become a fraud case and I would be put on trial, and that is what happened. It comes after a long summer of bullying and abuse and I found it just another chapter in that.”

On December 12, Elisabetta Grillo took the stand in her own defense. She told the court that, although she had never witnessed Lawson taking any drugs, she did find evidence of frequent drug use while she was cleaning the homes Lawson shared with her late husband and with Saatchi: “I was cleaning the house and I noticed a little packet on top of the loo, toilet. I opened it because it was kind of a little funny envelope and I saw white powder.” Grillo said that she once found rolled-up banknotes, including American dollars, in one of Lawson’s drawers. Asked whether there was anything on them, Grillo replied, “Yes, again, white stuff.” Asked how often she saw evidence of cocaine use, Grillo testified, “Like every three days, regularly, not only once.” She also testified that Lawson allowed her children to smoke marijuana at home—an accusation that could have serious legal consequences for Lawson, if true.

On December 13, as Grillo testified for the second day, prosecutor Jane Carpenter asked, “Is it your evidence that Miss Lawson has lied to this court?”

“Yes,” answered Grillo.

When Francesca Grillo took the stand she backed up her sister’s allegations, also testifying to Lawson’s frequent drug use. She told the court that she had been present when Mimi came across a stash of white powder hidden inside a box disguised as a book. Her testimony also touched on Saatchi’s behavior. She told the court, “[Saatchi] said, ‘You can fucking hide anywhere in Italy, but I will find you and destroy you.’ . . . He said he would find me and hunt me down, those were his words. You don’t cross Charles Saatchi, everyone knows that.”

Throughout, public support for Lawson has remained robust. One friend of Saatchi’s says, “She’s a saint in the U.K.” Even Prime Minister David Cameron jumped into the fray, when he admitted in an interview that he was on “Team Nigella,” calling her a “very funny and warm person.” The judge ordered jurors to ignore his comments. (Testimony in the Grillo case concluded on December 18. Two days later, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.)

After such a turbulent summer, Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson appear to have gotten over each other quite nicely. Despite his later testimony of heartbreak during the Grillo trial, Saatchi told someone close to him in early autumn, “I no longer love her. I no longer hate her. I no longer have contempt for her. I don’t feel anything.” And, in an obvious swipe at Lawson’s role on the ABC series The Taste, he told this same person, “The Nigella Lawson I know wouldn’t have thought it dignified to be a judge on a cooking show.”

For her part, Lawson—who spent the summer in Los Angeles taping The Taste, before returning to London in early October—continues to communicate through her Twitter feed, to her more than 450,000 followers, posting everything from photos of a “teenage boy fry-up” of bacon, sausage, baked beans, and sunny-side-up eggs for her son, Bruno, to breathless missives such as “Just thinking about our top 5 pork recipes makes me purr with pleasure.” She has granted interviews, but only in the context of promoting a project, and with the explicit understanding that her personal life is off limits.

After friends told Saatchi he needed to move on and stop moping, the photographer and writer Amanda Eliasch, a close friend of his, suggested he meet Trinny Woodall, an attractive 49-year-old divorcée and former co-host of What Not to Wear, a makeover reality-television series in the U.K. Their first-date destination: Scott’s. Photographs were published the next day. And in subsequent photos, Woodall appeared draped across Saatchi in the back of a taxi, “exposing her tights—and almost her knickers,” as the Daily Express put it. Woodall, the youngest of six siblings, had problems with drugs and alcohol into her 20s, but, after stints in rehab, has been clean and sober for 23 years. She has one daughter from her marriage to businessman Johnny Elichaoff, from whom she was divorced in 2009. Saatchi and Woodall have been photographed at both Scott’s and Colbert, a restaurant in Sloane Square, a half-mile from “The House,” where she has been spending an increasing amount of time.

Saatchi, according to a source, now routinely asks the doormen at Scott’s, “Any paps [paparazzi] out there?”