02 February, 2018
Dolly Alderton is an award-winning writer, director and podcast host. She was a dating columnist for The Sunday Times Style from 2015 to 2017, and still writes for The Times and The Sunday Times. In between teaming up with Pandora Sykes for their podcast The High Low, she regularly writes for publications such as GQ, Marie Clare and The Spectator. Her first book, "Everything I Know About Love" was released in January 2018 and her podcast Love Stories, released in conjunction with her book, has already risen to the top of the charts.
We called on Dolly's experience with dating to help us find love in London. Here, she explains why a bench at the foot of a hill is preferable to any overpriced outdoor cinema, where she'd like her next sleepover to be and one place where finding love is definitely not as realistic as it sounds...
The bank opposite The Houses of Parliament. I used to work in a production company in County Hall and nothing made me feel gloomier than the conveyer belt of couples who were having their engagement photos taken there that I passed on my way to the office.
The bench at the summit of Primrose Hill. Heavenly.
The aforementioned bench.
I mean, there's at least one location in every borough of London where I've had a bad date; but don't know how much of an uplifting read that list would be so instead I will answer with my most inventive first date: the boy who took me on a walking tour of Camden's rock 'n' roll history in the depths of winter. It was me, him, a Spanish couple and an enthusiastic American tour guide who tagged along for our drink afterwards.
Hampstead. It's where the romantic poets were inspired to write.
Any overpriced London outdoor cinema event. I blame it on all that grass they can showily roll around on.
Columbia Road on Sunday morning before a bowl of pasta and a glass of wine at Campania and Jones. Or Wild At Heart at Liberty. They often sell camomile, which is my favourite flower (by a lucky coincidence, this also makes me quite a cheap woman to seduce).
Claridge's. I mean, I've never stayed the night there, but a girl can dream.
Babington House for a treat. That's cliched and predictable isn't it? I can't help it, I love it there. It's the free scones.
That people meet in galleries. When I hear single women say: "I am opening myself up to meeting people, I'm going to art exhibitions", I want to say: "Unless you would like to go out with a 60-something woman in a pair of dangly peridot earrings and a William Morris print tote bag or a French school boy, you'll have no luck there pal, trust me."
