Dorothy Scannell was born in the East End of London in 1911, one of ten children. At the age of 63, when she was already a grandmother, she wrote her first book Mother Knew Best, an evocative and entertaining memoir of her working-class childhood in east London between World Wars One and Two. The book’s success prompted two further memoirs, Dolly's War and Dolly's Mixture, as well as a series of novels.

After marrying Chas, Dorothy had two children and two grand-children. She died, aged 96, in 2008.