Rose Garrard was born in Bewdley, Worcestershire, in 1946. Her family moved to Malvern when she was three months old and for many years her mother was the proprietor of the Collector's Corner, an antique shop in Malvern. Her father combined life as an artist with the career of a soldier by running the Middle East College of Art in the Sahara Desert. The purpose of this college was to rehabilitate officers to civilian life. He returned to Malvern as a colonel and received an MBE in 1953.

Rose trained as a sculptor at the Stourbridge, Birmingham and Chelsea Schools of Art, winning a British Council Scholarship to the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where she was awarded the Prix d`Honneur de Paris for sculpture in 1971. She went on to receive many further awards, curated group exhibitions and exhibited in major galleries both nationally, such as at London's Victoria & Albert Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Tate, the Serpentine and the Hayward Galleries, and internationally at the Venice Biennale, the Museum of the Century Vienna, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Messenhallen West Berlin and in numerous other galleries in cities across the world. As well as also being commissioned to make many public art works, she has created four artist's works for television companies, has appeared frequently on TV and has also written many articles for art magazines and catalogues. In 2000 she moved her home and studio from London back to Malvern, to aid her recovery following a major road accident.

This is her third book on Malvern and her first complete history of the town and area.