Barbara Taylor Bradford dies aged 91 as tributes paid to bestselling author

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Bestselling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford, best known for penning A Woman Of Substance, has died at the age of 91, it has been announced.The author died peacefully at her home on Sunday November 24 following a short illness, "and was surrounded by loved ones to the very end", a spokeswoman said.During her lenghty career, she wrote a total of 40 novels, with her most recent, The Wonder of It All, published last year.She was often labelled "the grand dame of blockbusters", with her books selling more than 91 million copies to date, and having been published in more than 40 languages and in 90 countries.Barbara was born in Leeds in May 1933, the only child of Winston and Freda Taylor.She began work as a typist for the Yorkshire Evening Post before she was promoted to reporter and then went on to become the paper's first woman's editor.At the age of 20 she moved to London and worked in Fleet Street for Woman's Own and the London Evening News.She met her husband, American film producer Robert Bradford, in 1961 and they fell in love at first sight, marrying in London on Christmas Eve in 1963.The following year she moved to New York to live with him.The couple were married for 55 years until he died from a major stroke in 2019.Taylor Bradford had started and ditched several novels while pursuing her journalistic career - until she hit the big time when A Woman Of Substance was published in 1979, making her an overnight success.The story followed Emma Harte's journey from life as a servant in rural Yorkshire to heading a business empire, despite numerous personal tragedies along the way.It became a huge bestseller and was followed by many other successful books.A TV adaptation of A Woman Of Substance followed in 1985, and