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TV chef Nigella Lawson and art collector Charles Saatchi have been granted a divorce at the High Court in London, ending their 10-year marriage.

In a hearing lasting less than a minute, District Judge Anne Aitken granted the couple a decree nisi.

Last month, pictures emerged of Mr Saatchi grabbing his wife by the throat.

He received a police caution for the incident, which took place at a London restaurant.

Mr Saatchi, 70, and Ms Lawson, 53, will now have to wait for a decree absolute - usually issued six weeks and one day following the granting of a decree nisi - to officially end the marriage.

Pictures of the couple at a restaurant in Mayfair, central London, showed Mr Saatchi grasping his wife's neck.

The images, which were first published in the , provoked a public debate about domestic violence among the rich and famous.

Mr Saatchi dismissed the incident as "a playful tiff" but later accepted a police caution for assault, saying he had done so to stop the incident "hanging over" them.

Ms Lawson has made no comment since the incident.

Mr Saatchi, a former advertising executive, is a well known art collector and owner of the Saatchi Gallery.

He donated his Chelsea art gallery, including more than 200 works of art, to the British public in 2010.

He and Ms Lawson married in 2003.

She has two children, Cosima and Bruno, from her marriage to journalist John Diamond, who died in 2001.

Ms Lawson first began a restaurant column in The Spectator in 1985 and by the following year, had become deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times.

She then went on to write the book How to Eat, followed by the award-winning book, How to be a Domestic Goddess.

Her television cookery programmes - including Nigella Bites and Nigella's Christmas Kitchen - have brought her international fame.

Earlier this month, Channel 4 announced it was bringing a version of her hit US cookery show, The Taste, to the UK in 2014.