Everything I Know About Love

by Dolly Alderton

Thank you to Jackie Annesley and Laura Atkinson for giving me my column in the Sunday Times Style, for editing and guiding me with patience and care, and for teaching me so much about how to tell a story.

  Thank you to the spectacular women who have not only lived through all these stories of the last decade with me, but who have allowed me to share them. Particular thanks to Farly Kleiner, Lauren Bensted, AJ Smith, India Masters, Sarah Spencer Ashworth, Lacey Pond-Jones, Sabrina Bell, Sophie Wilkinson, Helen Nianias, Belle Dudley, Alex King-Lyles, Octavia Bright, Peach Everard, Millie Jones, Emma Percy, Laura Scott, Jess Blunden, Pandora Sykes, Hannah Mackay, Sarah Hicks, Noo Kirby and Jess Wyndham.

  Thank you to the Kleiner family, for allowing me to write about and dedicate the book to Florence – whose humility, integrity and passion will forever embolden and inspire me with every word I write.

  Thank you to my family – Mum, Dad and Ben – who have always told me that anything is possible. Who have always encouraged me to tell a story honestly, safe in the knowledge that I will never be judged by them. How exceptionally lucky I am to have you – I love you so very much.

  And, finally, thank you to Farly, without whose unwavering cheering and championing I would not have written this book. You are – you always will be – my favourite love story.

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  First published 2018

  Copyright © Dolly Alderton, 2018

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Cover design: StudioHelen

  Permissions: extract here from Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of Margaret Atwood. Copyright © O. W. Toad, 1996; lines here from ‘Lovesong’ taken from Crow by Ted Hughes (Faber and Faber, 1972), copyright © Ted Hughes, 1970, 1972; lines here from ‘Shelter from the Storm’ by Bob Dylan, copyright © 1974 by Ram’s Horn Music, renewed 2002 by Ram’s Horn Music, all rights reserved, international copyright secured, reprinted by permission; and lines here from ‘The More Loving One’ by W. H. Auden, copyright © 1960 by W. H. Auden, renewed, reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd

  ISBN: 978-0-241-98209-9