Dolly Alderton: who is Everything I Know About Love writer, other books - and did she work on Made In Chelsea?

Everything I Know About Love is a BBC One drama series based on the best-selling memoir of author and journalist Dolly Alderton.

Alderton also has experience working as a podcaster and in the film and TV industry on popular shows and movies.

In 2018, Alderton featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and the following year she was a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Who is Dolly Alderton?

Alderton is a 33-year-old half-Canadian British writer and journalist who was born in London in 1988. Originally named Hannah, she changed her name to Dolly as a teenager.

She studied English at Exeter University and completed a Master’s degree in Journalism at City University, London.

Alderton began her career in journalism at The Sunday Times, working as a dating columnist from 2015-2017 before becoming an agony aunt for the same paper in her column Dear Dolly.

She has also written content for magazines including GQ, Red, Marie Claire and Grazia and newspapers such as The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Washington Post, and Evening Standard.

She published her debut book, Everything I Know About Love, a memoir, in 2018 and wrote the screenplay when it was adapted to a BBC series which was released this year.

Her second book and first novel, Ghosts, was published in 2020, and she also contributed an essay to the collection Dear NHS: 100 Stories to Say Thank You, which raised more than £250,000 for NHS Charities Together and The Lullaby Trust.

Alderton has also created and contributes to several podcasts, including The High Low which discussed pop culture and current affairs and ran more than 150 episodes from 2016-2020.

She also presented Love Stories where she interviewed famous guests such as Stanley Tucci and Marian Keyes.

Her guest podcast appearances include joining comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster for Off Menu and Table Manners with singer Jessie Ware.

Alderton worked as a story producer on the constructed reality series Made In Chelsea from season 2-5 and worked as a script assistant on season four of sitcom Fresh Meat.

She wrote and directed the independent film, Anna, Island with her fellow writer and director Lauren Bensted.

Alderton was involved in a serious relationship in her 20s but has reportedly been single since then.

What are Dolly Alderton’s books about?

Everything I Know About Love is a memoir which recounts Alderton’s experiences of falling in and out of love, going on bad dates, relying on a network of female best friends, and navigating the adult world of employment and living independently.

The memoir won a 2018 National Book Award for autobiography and was shortlisted for the 2019 Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year in the British Book Awards.

The novel Ghosts is about a woman in her early 30s who is working as a food writer and has a strong circle of friends and family.

However, she finds that her thirties are not a liberating time, rather she feels that her friends are drifting away from her and her opportunities are dwindling as time passes.

So, when she meets the romantic Max, she feels a new relationship couldn’t have come at a better time. Alderton sold the film rights to Ghosts in 2020.