A portrait of Nigella Lawson has been hung in the corridors of an Oxford college as part of a display to inspire current students.

The celebrity chef’s picture has been put on display at Lady Margaret Hall along with other notable former female students such as Benazir Bhutto, the first female prime minister of Pakistan, and former director general of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller.

The gallery is the final part of a four-month refurbishment of the Deneke Corridor aimed at showcasing the variety and diversity of the college’s former students.

The previous collection of pictures, mostly male tutors and staff, has been relocated to Talbot Hall.

Writing in a blog on the college website, principal Alan Rusbridger said many colleges, both in Cambridge and Oxford, had become ‘embarrassed by the monopoly of portraits of men’, and had been commissioning more portraits or photographs of women.

He writes: “From these new portraits I think you get a wonderful sense of a great variety of former students who were partly shaped by their time within these walls, and who went on to lead lives of considerable distinction.” 

Ms Lawson read Modern Languages at LMH, graduating in 1979.

She is pictured above at a recent book signing at Blackwell's Westgate store.