Rosemary Aitken was born Rosemary Rowe in Penzance, Cornwall during the Second World War. The granddaughter of a tin-miner killed in the Levant mine disaster, she moved to New Zealand with her parents and was largely educated, and was married there, before returning to the UK in 1967. She is the mother of two adult children and has two grandchildren living in New Zealand,and three grandchildren in Cambridgeshire. After living and lecturing in Gloucestershire for many years, she returned to her beloved native Cornwall in 2007 and now lives in a beautiful wooded area close to Truro and the Fal.