Blockbuster novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford dead at 91

Bestselling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford, who wrote A Woman of Substance, has died at age 91. The author died peacefully at her home on Sunday following a short illness, "and was surrounded by loved ones to the very end", a spokeswoman said. She wrote 40 novels during her career, with her most recent, The Wonder of It All, published in 2023. She was often labelled "the grand dame of blockbusters", with her books selling more than 91 million copies, and having been published in more than 40 languages and in 90 countries. She was born in Leeds, England, in 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. She moved to London at age 20 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 married 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 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. 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, starring Liam Neeson with Jenny Seagrove playing Emma Harte. It went on to garner two Emmy nominations. The author later published A Man of Honour, the prequel to A Woman of Substance, which starts five years before the original and follows the fortunes of Blackie O'Neill, who leaves County Kerry for Leeds to build a better life, and meets kitchen maid Emma Harte. Taylor Bradford was awarded an OBE in 2007 for services to literature. Following a private funeral in New York, the author will be buried alongside her late husband at the city's Westchester Hills Cemetery.