Barbara Taylor Bradford OBE
Barbara Taylor Bradford was born and raised in England. She left school at 15 for the typing pool at the Yorkshire Evening Post. At 16, she became a reporter on the paper and, at 18, its first Woman’s Editor. Aged 20, she moved to London and became a columnist and editor on Fleet Street. Barbara now lives in New York. She was married to her beloved husband, television and film producer Robert Bradford, for 55 years until he died in 2019.
Barbara started writing fiction when she was just seven years old and sold her first short story to a magazine for seven shillings and sixpence when she was 10 years old.
She published her first novel, A Woman of Substance, in 1979. It went from bestseller to super seller within its first year and stayed on the New York Times’ list for 43 weeks.
• Barbara has had 40 books published, all worldwide bestsellers. Her most recent, The Wonder of It All, was published in the UK and Commonwealth by HarperCollins (November 2023), and in the US by St Martin’s Press (December 2023).
• Ten of her books have been produced as TV films or drama series by Robert Bradford, starring actors including Liam Neeson, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Jenny Seagrove, Deborah Kerr, Sir John Mills, Lindsay Wagner and Elizabeth Hurley. Robert Bradford managed Barbara’s career, made the publishing deals, and created innovative marketing ideas for her novels for 43 years until his death in 2019.
• 91 million copies of her books have been sold to date. They are published in over 40 languages and in more than 90 countries.
• In October 2007, Barbara was appointed an OBE by The Queen for her services to literature.
• Barbara holds five Honorary Doctorate of Letters. These are from the University of Leeds, Yorkshire; the University of Bradford, Yorkshire; Teikyo Post University, Conneticut; Siena College, Loudonville, New York; Mount Saint Mary College, Newburgh, New York.
• Barbara is the recipient of 25 other awards for her writing achievements and philanthropy. In 2008, she was awarded the St George Society of New York: Medal of Honor 2008. Barbara was the first woman to ever receive it. The award recognises those who have rendered exemplary service to British interests and the international community at large. Other awards include Woman of the Year by British Schools and Universities of New York 2010, The Lizzie Award from Literacy Partners 2015.
• In 2014, Barbara became an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust, an independent UK charity that transforms lives through literacy.
• In 2015, Barbara, in partnership with HarperCollins and The Sunday Times, launched The Write Stuff, a UK competition to help discover the next generation of young female writers. The Write Stuff also ran in 2017 with Barbara being the co-chair of judging and actively involved in the competition.
• The Brotherton Library of Leeds University is the Keeper of the Barbara Taylor Bradford Archive. All of Barbara’s original manuscripts are housed there (40 works of fiction), spanning more than 40 years of work. It sits alongside those of Yorkshire’s other legendary writers including the Brontë sisters.
• In 2016, Barbara was recognised as one of 90 Great Britons as part of a major portrait to mark Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday.
• Barbara has served on a number of Board of Directors including Literacy Partners US, The Police Athletic League and Reporters Without Borders.
• In 2019, Barbara was made the first ever Ambassador for Women in Journalism in the UK.
• Barbara received The Leeds Award in November 2019, a prestigious award that acknowledges her dedication to her hometown of Leeds, which features so prominently in many of her novels, and her promotion of Leeds internationally. Recipients of the Leeds Award have their name inscribed on the ‘wall of fame’ located in the Ante Chamber of the Civic Hall in Leeds.
• In 2021, Barbara was made a patron of The Leeds Library, the oldest membership subscription library in the UK. To mark her role as patron, the Leeds Library set up an annual lecture in the name of Barbara. The Library, which was founded in 1768, has a collection of over 140,000 items and is a much-loved cultural institution of Leeds.
• Described as the “grand dame of blockbusters”, “Queen of the genre”, Barbara’s amazing success has made her one of the most successful writers in the world today.
• The book tells the story of Emma Harte and the machinations and intrigue of a family retail empire. It is the first of seven novels following the trials and tribulations of the Harte family.
• It was first published in 1979.
• The original manuscript took two years to write, weighed 16.5 lbs and ran to 1,520 pages. Barbara describes the leading character of her novel, Emma Harte, as, “a woman who was strong, independent, driven, ambitious, courageous – willing to go out and put herself on the line and do something. I created a woman who wanted to conquer the world.”
A Woman of Substance: a worldwide bestseller
- A Woman of Substance is ranked in the top ten bestselling works of fiction of all time with more than 32 million copies sold.
- The book tells the story of Emma Harte and the machinations and intrigue of a family retail empire. It is the first of seven novels following the trials and tribulations of the Harte family.
- It was first published in 1979.
- The original manuscript took two years to write, weighed 16.5 lbs and ran to 1,520 pages.
- Barbara describes the leading character of her novel, Emma Harte, as a woman who was strong, independent, driven, ambitious, courageous – willing to go out and put herself on the line and do something. I created a woman who wanted to conquer the world.
“An extravagant, absorbing novel of love, courage, ambition, war, death and passion.”
– New York Times
“A mighty saga. Little has been so riveting since Good With the Wind.”
– Evening News
“A long, satisfying novel of money, power, passion and revenge, set against the sweep of 20th century history.”
– Los Angeles Times
After attending Christ Church Elementary School and Northcote Private School for Girls, Barbara Taylor started work as a typist for the Yorkshire Evening Post.
She was aged 15. Within six months she was promoted to cub reporter in the newsroom. “It was because I was such a bad typist and was ruining so much of their expensive paper!” she joked. Nevertheless, at 18 she became the newspaper’s Woman’s Page Editor.
At age 20 she decided to head for London, where she became Fashion Editor of the magazine Woman’s Own. In the ensuing years in Fleet Street, hub of Britain’s publishing empire, she covered every beat from crime to show business reporting for the London Evening News, Today Magazine and other publications. The grounding paid off.
1961 was a significant year for Barbara Taylor, a journalist who felt destined to become “a hard-bitten reporter in a dirty trenchcoat.” On a blind date she met her husband-to-be, American film producer Robert Bradford, and fell in love at first sight. In 1963 they married and Barbara moved to the USA. She carried on her journalistic career writing a syndicated column, Designing Woman, covering interior design and lifestyles, which appeared three times a week in 183 newspapers across America. The column was published for 12 years and garnered several awards.
Children’s books followed, plus eight books on decorating; however, Barbara never lost her desire to write fiction, and despite several failed attempts, the turning point came in 1976 when she sold A Woman of Substance to a publisher on the strength of a ten-page outline and 192 pages. The rest, as they say, is history.
Barbara Taylor Bradford has written 40 novels – 39 of which have been dedicated to her husband Bob. Both workaholics and unrepentant romantics, Barbara and Bob were married for 55 years and were as dedicated to one another as they were when they first met. “I referred to him as the General,” she said, “and he called me Napoleon!” While Barbara wrote, Bob took care of her literary interests and business.
He also produced ten of Barbara’s books in to television mini-series or movies. After the publication in 1979 of her worldwide bestseller A Woman of Substance, which like all her books was dedicated to her beloved husband, Bob supervised the 1985 television mini-series of the book which starred Jenny Seagrove and Deborah Kerr. The series was watched in the UK by 13.8 million people, as well as broadcast around the world, and was nominated for two Emmys.
