Barbara Taylor-Bradforda British journalist who became an editorial sensation at the age of 40 with the saga “A Woman of Substance” and who wrote more than a dozen other novels that sold tens of millions of copies, has died. She was 91 years old.
Bradford died Sunday at her home in New York, a spokesperson said Monday. An obituary was also posted on his website.
Beginning with “A Woman of Substance”, published in 1979, Bradford averaged nearly a book a year and was one of the world’s most popular and richest writers, with her net worth estimated at over $200 million dollars and his fame so high that his image appeared on a postage stamp in 1999. In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him an OBE (The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).
His books have been published in 40 languages and sold more than 90 million copies worldwide.
Steve Parsons/AP
With titles like “Breaking the Rules” and “Act of Will,” she specialized in stories of women fighting for love and power in a man’s world. Her favorite book was “The Women of Her Life”, inspired by her husband’s flight from the Nazis.
Bradford was married for 56 years to German-born film producer Robert Bradford, who died in 2019.
Originally from Leeds, West Yorkshire, she was an only child in a working-class family who loved books from an early age. When she was little, she had a story published in a local magazine. At 16, she left school against her parents’ wishes to become a journalist for the Yorkshire Evening Post. Over the next 30 years, she would work as fashion editor for Woman’s Own Magazine, cover various topics for the London Evening News, and, in the United States, write a syndicated column on interior design.
Although she wrote stories and advice books for children, novels were her dream. “A Woman of Substance” was a multi-generational chronicle of the travails and triumphs of retail baron Emma Harte, who would feature in several other Bradford novels. The book sold over 30 million copies and was the basis for a 1984 television miniseries starring Jenny Seagrove as young Emma and Deborah Kerr as late Emma. the life.
“And if you want to meet the real Emma, meet me,” Bradford told the Telegraph of London in 2009. “Emma must have been tough and unforgiving at times: but so am I. I have to be, as as a businesswoman. And I’m a damn good businesswoman.”
Bradford and Emma Harte weren’t just linked by money: both had family secrets. As a young woman, Emma became pregnant by a man who refused to marry her and gave birth to a daughter. Years later, Bradford learned through his biographer that his own mother had been born out of wedlock. Bradford’s maternal grandfather is now believed to have been Frederick Oliver Robinson, second Marquess of Ripon and owner of the Studley Royal estate in Yorkshire, which is now a World Heritage Site.
Seagrove, who befriended Bradford after starring in the miniseries, described her as a “powerhouse of glamor and hotness” and a “force of nature” who stayed true to her roots .
“Success never diluted her warmth and humor or her ability to interact with everyone she met, whether it was a maid or a princess,” Seagrove said. “She never forgot that she was just a hard-working, successful Yorkshire girl. RIP dear friend.”
Bradford had a strict writing routine: at work behind his IBM Lexmark typewriter at 6 a.m., break around 1 p.m., then return to writing until 6 p.m. at the latest. According to a 2006 authorized biography, “The Woman of Substance” by Piers Dudgeon, Bradford has more than adapted to her midlife fortunes, living in a 5,300-square-foot apartment overlooking Manhattan’s East River, collecting impressionist art and tasting refills of rosé champagne poured by his Moroccan. butler. When the Bradfords listed their apartment for sale in 2010, the asking price was just under $19 million. (They sold it to Uma Thurman in 2013 for $10 million).
Over the years, she met many other celebrities. Bradford befriended Sean Connery before his appearance in his first James Bond film and remembers advising him, fortunately to no avail, to lose his Scottish accent if he wanted to succeed.
Around the same time, she met a fellow journalist from the Yorkshire Evening Post. He was “lanky and disheveled from acne” and tried to talk to her even after she refused him a date to the movies.
His name was Peter O’Toole.
“Years later, (Evening Post editor) Keith Waterhouse and I were at an event where producer Sam Spiegel introduced the star of his new film,” she told the Guardian in 2021 “The most handsome man I’ve ever seen came out, dressed as Lawrence of Arabia, Keith said: ‘Don’t you wish you’d gone to the movies with him now?’ Peter’s transformation.”
According to the obituary posted on her website, when Bradford was recently asked what would be on her epitaph, she replied, “She made her dreams come true.”
According to the obituary, Bradford will be laid to rest next to her husband in Westchester Hills Cemetery, New York, following a private funeral at Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue.
