Rosemary Long has been messing about with words since she edited the school magazine (in Coatbridge) back in the days when How Much is That Doggie in the Window? was in the Hit Parade. From a local paper she moved to the (long defunct) Glasgow Evening Citizen as assistant woman's editor at the tender age of 19. 

Since  then she has covered - mainly for the Glasgow Evening Times and The Herald -  features, fashion, investigations, opinion columns, TV, theatre reviews, interviews (she once interviewed the scary Barbara Woodhouse,  and, on another occasion,  Barbara Cartland and her cosseted Pekingese) . "You name it, I seem to have written it about somewhere, sometime", she says.  Several times she won Scottish Press Awards for her articles.

 In the 1990s she spent eight years in The Gambia, writing about her life there for the (Glasgow) Herald, and producing two books based on her experiences. Today, however, although she still writes an occasional piece, she concentrates on tutoring feature-writing and related classes in Strathclyde University's Adult Education unit.

Rosemary is embarrassed  to confess that, although she is dotty about dogs (Dealas, in the picture, belongs to granddaughter Mariama, left), she lives in a tiny  non-dog-friendly flat, so owns . . . a large old one-eyed cat!
She has a son in social work, a daughter teaching English in Japan, another daughter teaching special needs children in Glasgow - and six grandchildren.