Victoria Mary Clarke

Articles/Barara Taylor Bradford

Barbara Taylor Bradford interview
copyright Victoria Mary Clarke, 2003

A young and achingly beautiful red-head thrusts her tiny, frozen hands deep into the pockets of a threadbare coat and head bowed against a penetrating wind, strides determinedly over the moors. Glancing up, she sees that stormy black clouds are hovering, ominously in a steely grey sky and she quickens her pace, in the damp, icy morning.

The young girl is Emma Harte, a poor working class servant from the North of England and she is pregnant by the Lord and master of the big house, who casually tosses her aside, refusing to acknowledge his child. An age-old tale of the triumph of good over evil, of a decent, hardworking penniless girl over a family of greedy, privileged and cruel toffs. When Barbara Taylor Bradford conceived Emma Harte in 1976, she was tapping into a vein that has run through story-telling since caveman and cavewoman first lulled their cave-babies to sleep with stories of the good cave-people bashing the bad cave-people over the head and making off with their furry blankets. She touched that place in all of us that wants to believe that the best man will win and that in the end, however unfair the accidents of birth and class and position, God is just and will reward the deserving and punish the wicked ones.

A working class Northerner herself, from what she describes as 'an ordinary family", Barbara embodies all of the traits of her heroines and has risen from her humble beginnings to be every inch the "Woman of Substance" that she created in her multi-million selling novel of that same name. This year Barbara has been honoured with her very own postage stamp, on the Isle of Man and she has been presented to the Queen. In the class-ridden society of her novels, the heroine rises through the ranks, from penniless peasant servant to grand lady and purchases the very same big house, Pennistone Royal that was once the property of the man who cast her aside, when she was pregnant with his child. She takes not only the house, but the entire village as well and she buys grand houses in London and furnishes all of her houses with the very best antiques and the very best paintings, having casually acquired impeccable taste and sophistication on her way up the ladder.

Emma, the heroine is the founder of a chain of department stores, -the 'Hartes" chain- and the stores are very much like the famous Harrods department store in Knightsbridge , and indeed the London store is positioned exactly where Harrods stands. But unlike the unfortunate Mohammed Al Fayed, Emma manages to attain social standing within the aristocracy, as well as great wealth. She winds up lunching regularly at 'The Dorch" and the Savoy, to prove it, and in the true spirit of Divine retribution, her first born illegitimate child winds up a Countess and spawns an Earl. More of an American Dream than an English one, this notion of all things being equal if you've got enough cash, but Barbara is married to a Hollywood producer and has lived in the US since 1963. And in America, they have a different attitude to the self made man and woman, which is reflected in her books. And in her sales figures. To date, Barbara has sold over seventy million books and 'A Woman of Substance" is one of the top ten best-selling novels ever published. Which puts her up there with such luminaries as Hemingway and Robert Frost and qualifies her as a Literary Legend in the Writer's Hall of Fame.

An awfully long way to have come. With ten of her eighteen novels already made into mini-series, Barbara Taylor Bradford is a household name and she may not be founding a department-store dynasty, like her heroine did, but she's worth far more and is far more famous than Emma was. So what's Barbara like? She's got to be hideous, right? A frightful creature in blonde wig and marabou feathers, trailing poodles all over posh hotels and making minions suffer horribly? No, she's not. She's utterly charming.

As we sit down for a spot of lunch at the Langham Hilton, I confess that I have an agenda, that I want to learn something from her. She smiles graciously and nods. Enquiring in a wonderfully preserved Yorkshire accent if I would like tea. I look her over, inspecting the jewelry and the clothes and find all of it surprisingly tame. The handbag is from Chanel, but nothing is ostentatious. Her hair is blonde, but gently so and her make-up is subtle. What fascinates me, I say, is fortune, good fortune of any kind and how it comes about. How one little girl writes stories and grows up to sell nine million books and one little girl writes stories and grows up to plod away for a newspaper! I am not bitter, I tell her, somewhat untruthfully, but I want to know what the x factor is. She admits, modestly to having made something of a success of her life.

"I suppose I have, actually. But maybe I did it unconsciously. I always wanted to be a novelist. I loved to write little stories, when I was seven and eight and nine and when I was ten I had written a story about a little girl and her pony and it was all ink-blots and scratching out. And my mother thought it was charming , so she made me copy it neatly, which took me forever! Then she sent it to a magazine for children and they bought it, three months later and enclosed a postal order for seven and sixpence! I was more excited that I was going to see my name in print. I bought my mother a green vase from Woolworths and I bought my father handkerchiefs from the haberdasher.'

Thereby exhibiting the traits that brought success to her heroine. Diligence, perseverance, hard work, and above all honouring the family. Giving something back.
"I always knew that I wanted to write books," she says. Her mother, Freda, a nurse and a voracious reader had introduced Babs to books at the age of four and by the age of twelve she had read all of Dickens and The Brontes. When she was fourteen she knew she could write a novel, but who was going to buy a novel from a kid?

"As my mother always said you've got to live life before you can write those sorts of things. So I opted for journalism and I still often tell people that I am proud to be known as a journalist."

Barbara was only fifteen and a half, when she went to work at the 'Yorkshire Evening Post" A bit young?

' John Major and I had a good laugh at that and I am not name-dropping on purpose!"

You name drop as much as you like I say, generously.

"My husband Bob and I met John and Norma in Florida and we became friends. I once said to John that people sometimes look at me funny and say 'You left school at fifteen and a half? And you didn't have an education?' And they are rather snotty about it. I say 'Oh, but I did have an education, probably better than yours. Because I went to the best University in the world, a newspaper office!'

John Major left school at fifteen too. And he became prime minister.

Do people who left school young push their way ahead in the world, to make up for it?

'Yes. And only children do, too. You carry a very heavy burden as an only child. You have to fulfil all your parent's ambitions. My parents didn't want me to leave school, they wanted me to go to Leeds University and study English. But they bore with me, because I had got the job. My mother kept telling me that I would get the sack, but it didn't happen. When Leeds University gave me an honorary Doctorate of Letters, I said to the man 'My mother always wanted me to go to Leeds University. I wish she were here today." And Bob looked up and said 'I think your mother and father are looking down, which brought a lump to my throat."

Barbara adored her parents, especially her mother.

"She was very witty and the repartee was fast and furious between her and my father. My mother was a Gemini and my father was a Gemini and my husband is a Gemini and my agent is a Gemini and I'm a Taurus. I'm surrounded. What are you? And what is Reece?'

Reece is the publisher's representative, who has joined us for lunch.

"Korean," Reece replies. Barbara laughs uproariously.

In the books, the leading ladies are always very close to their daughters and encourage them endlessly, just like Freda did. Which is where Barbara reckons she got the confidence that lead to her success.

"She always said I could do anything I wanted as long as I worked hard. And I believed everything that she said. She demonstrated that she loved me every day. And when I was growing up she always told me that I was the best and the brightest and the prettiest and I could have everything. My parents gave me an enormous amount of self-confidence."

It was lonely, though, being an only child and Barbara had imaginary friends, tea parties with people who weren't there.

"My imagination developed and I read a lot of books. My mother took me to the pictures with her a lot, too. Then came the writing. After I sold the short story I asked my father for a typewriter. He said 'You don't know how to type!' I said I would teach myself. So he bought me an old second hand type-writer."

And that lead to a job in the typing pool at the Yorkshire Evening Post,
"But I soon got myself out of there by writing little features about local people. I got moved into the reporter's room and I sat next to Keith Waterhouse and he helped me with my copy. Then we got a new Woman's page editor called Madeleine Mc Loughlin from Manchester and I became her assistant. She taught me a lot and when she left, the new editor said to me 'Barbara, we are going to let you try and write the woman's page. But we can't pay you any more money. Typical!"

When she was twenty, Barbara was fashion editor at Woman's Own. And wrote eight books about decorating. Another passion inspired by her mother.

"I have a very good eye. And I had a mother who loved to go to stately homes and there are a lot in Yorkshire, all open to the public and she would take me with her. I acquired a love for beautiful furniture."

The books are full of descriptions of antiques, paintings, carpets and other home furnishings. Everything is immaculately chosen to reflect it's owner's sophistication. There is no room for the 'Posh and Becks' style of success, no flashier- than-thou fripperies, no evidence of Nouveau Riche vulgarity. To have successfully negotiated one's way to the top of the ladder, it seems, one must have cleverly concealed one's roots and one must give the impression of always having had wealth in the family. But the trappings of wealth and class are unimportant, Barbara insists.

"A person is important because of her talents, her characteristics. Emma becomes important because she builds the business and the dynasty. A monarch goes to the bathroom, just like you and I. I am not impressed by social standing. If somebody says to me 'Oh you should meet so and so, they are very rich', I say that's the wrong reason for me to meet them. Because they aren't going to give me their money. So what else have they got, to recommend them? Are they human? Are they empathetic?