Elizabeth Edmondson was born in Santiago, Chile. In the late 1960s, she read English Language and Literature at, and graduated from St. Hilda's College, Oxford. She lived in Oxford and Italy. She also wrote romances and sagas under the pseudonym 'Elizabeth Pewsey' and under her married name 'Elizabeth Aston'. She is the creator of the 'Very English Mystery' series featuring Hugo Hawksworth, an intelligence officer in 1950s England.