Piers Dudgeon - The Woman of Substance - The Life and Work of Barbara Taylor Bradford

The Woman of Substance

THE SECRET LIFE THAT INSPIRED

THE RENOWNED STORYTELLER

Barbara Taylor Bradford was born and raised in England. She started her writing career on the Yorkshire Evening Post and later worked as a journalist in London. Her first novel, A Woman of Substance , became an enduring bestseller and was followed by twenty-five others, including the bestselling Harte series. Barbara’s books have sold more than eighty-one million copies worldwide in more than ninety countries and forty languages, and ten mini-series and television movies have been made of her books. In October of 2007, Barbara was appointed an OBE by the Queen for her services to literature. She lives in New York City with her husband, television producer Robert Bradford.

Piers Dudgeon is the author of many works of nonfiction. He worked for ten years as an editor in London, before starting his own publishing company and producing books with authors as diverse as John Fowles, Catherine Cookson, Peter Ackroyd, Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Conran, Ted Hughes and Susan Hill. In 1993, he left London for the North York Moors, where he has written biographies of Sir John Tavener, Edward de Bono, Catherine Cookson, Josephine Cox, J M Barrie and Daphne du Maurier. He is currently working on a series of oral histories of post-industrial Britain and a book about the poet Ted Hughes’s childhood.

Cover

Title Page

List of Illustrations

Preface

PART ONE

The Party

Beginnings

Edith

The Abyss

PART TWO

A New Start?

Getting On

The Jeannie Years

Change of Identity

Coming Home

An Author of Substance

Hold the Dream

Novels by Barbara Taylor Bradford

Index

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Section 1

1. Barbara’s mother, Freda Walker, a nurse at Ripon Fever Hospital in 1922. (Bradford Photo Archive)

2. Freda in her early twenties with Tony Ellwood, the child she brought up in Armley, Leeds, before marrying Winston Taylor. (Bradford Photo Archive)

3. Winston Taylor, Barbara’s father as a boy of sixteen in the Royal Navy. (Bradford Photo Archive)

4. Winston’s sister, Laura, the model for Laura Spencer in A Woman of Substance . (Bradford Photo Archive)

5. Map of Armley, dated 1933, the year Barbara was born.

6. Barbara’s parents, Winston and Freda Taylor in 1929, the year they were married. (Bradford Photo Archive)

7. Barbara at two years, walking in Gott’s Park, Armley. (Bradford Photo Archive)

8. Tower Lane, Armley, site of Barbara’s first home.

9. No. 38 Tower Lane as it is today.

10. The Towers, the gothic row of mansions in Tower Lane, one of which became Emma Harte’s home in A Woman of Substance .

11. Armley Christ Church School, which Barbara attended with playwright Alan Bennett.

12. Freda and daughter Barbara – ‘the kind of little girl who always looked ironed from top to toe’. (Bradford Photo Archive)

13. Barbara aged three. (Bradford Photo Archive)

14. Christ Church Armley, where Barbara was baptised and received her first Communion.

15. Barbara as a fairy in a Sunday School pantomime. (Bradford Photo Archive)

16. Barbara with bucket and spade, aged five on holiday at Bridlington. (Bradford Photo Archive)

17and 18. Leeds Market, where Marks & Spencer began and the food halls in Emma Harte’s flag-ship store in A Woman of Substance were inspired. ( Yorkshire Post and Leeds Library)

19. Top Withens, the setting for Wuthering Heights . (Yorkshire Tourist Board)

20. ‘The roofless halls and ghostly chambers’ of Middleham Castle, North Yorkshire. (Skyscan Balloon Photography, English Heritage)

Section 2

21. 1909 Map of Ripon, when Barbara’s mother, Freda, was five.

22. Ripon Minster. (Ripon Library)

23. Ripon Market Place as Freda and her mother, Edith, knew it. (Ripon Library)

24. The Wakeman Hornblower, who still announces the watch each night at 9 p.m. (Ripon Library)

25. Water Skellgate in 1904, the year that Edith Walker gave birth there to Freda. (Ripon Library)

26. The stepping stones on the Skell where Freda fell. (Ripon Library)

27. One of Ripon’s ancient courts, like the one where Freda was born.

28. Freda dressed in her best at fourteen. (Bradford Photo Archive)

29. Studley Royal Hall, home of the Marquesses of Ripon. (Ripon Library)

30. Fountains Hall, on which Pennistone Royal in the Emma Harte novels is based. (Ripon Library)

31. Edith Walker, Barbara’s maternal grandmother. (Bradford Photo Archive)

32. Frederick Oliver Robinson of Studley Royal, Second Marquess of Ripon. (Ripon Library)

33. Ripon Union Workhouse, known as the Grubber in Edith’s day.

Section 3

34and 35. The offices of The Yorkshire Evening Post , where Barbara worked from fifteen. ( Yorkshire Post )

36. Barbara as YEP Woman’s Page Assistant at seventeen. (Bradford Photo Archive)

37. Barbara at nineteen, as Woman’s Page Editor. (Bradford Photo Archive)

38. Barbara’s sometime colleague, Keith Waterhouse, the celebrated commentator, playwright and author, with his collaborator, playwright Willis Hall. ( Yorkshire Post )

39. Barbara in 1953, aged twenty, when she left Leeds for London to work as a Fashion Editor on Woman’s Own . (Bradford Photo Archive)

40. Peter O’Toole with Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia . (Columbia Pictures)

41. Barbara’s husband, film producer Robert Bradford. (Bradford Photo Archive)

42. Barbara after her uprooting to New York. (Cris Alexander/Bradford Photo Archive)

43. Barbara’s mother, Freda Taylor, a long way from home on Fifth Avenue, New York.

44. Barbara, the writer. (Bradford Photo Archive)

45. Barbara, multi-million-selling author of A Woman of Substance. (Cris Alexander/Bradford Photo Archive)

Section 4

46. Robert Bradford with the book that realised a dream. (Bradford Photo Archive).

47. Jenny Seagrove as Emma Harte, the woman of substance. (Bradford Photo Archive)

48. Deborah Kerr takes over as the older Emma, with Sir John Mills as Henry Rossiter, Emma’s financial adviser. (Bradford Photo Archive)

49. Stars of To Be the Best , Lindsay Wagner and Sir Anthony Hopkins. (Bradford Photo Archive)

50. Barbara with the stars of To Be the Best , Fiona Fullerton, Lindsay Wagner, Christopher Cazenove and Sir Anthony Hopkins (Bradford Photo Archive)

51. Victoria Tenant as Audra Crowther and Kevin McNally as Vincent Crowther in Act of Will . (Odyssey Video from the DVD release Act of Will )

52. Barbara’s bichons frises, Beaji and Chammi. (Bradford Photo Archive)

53. Alan Bennett and Barbara receiving the degree of Doctor of Letters from Leeds University in 1990. ( Yorkshire Post )

54. Barbara with Reg Carr, sometime Keeper of the Barbara Taylor Bradford archive at the Brotherton Library in Leeds. (Bradford Photo Archive)

55. Barbara Taylor Bradford by Lord Lichfield. (Bradford Photo Archive)

Exploring one of the world’s most successful writers through the looking glass of her fiction is an idea particularly well suited in the case of Barbara Taylor Bradford, whose fictional heroines draw on their creator’s character and chart the emotional contours of her own experience, and whose own history so often emerges from the shadowland between fact and fiction.