Best-selling British novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford, 91, died on Nov. 24. Starting her career as a newspaper and magazine writer, Bradford began writing suspense novels, then switched to romantic, picaresque tales such as her first, the huge hit A Woman of Substance (1979). “I was in my late thirties,” Bradford said. “I thought: what if I get to 55, and I’ve never written a novel? I’m going to hate myself. I’m going to be one of those bitter, unfulfilled writers.” (You and me both, Babs—I can’t even get an agent or publisher to look at my novel!). Many of her books were made into movies or TV-movies (Hold the Dream, To Be the Best, Remember, Everything to Gain, Her Own Rules, A Secret Affair). “I write about mostly ordinary women who go on to achieve the extraordinary,” Bradford said. She also wrote children’s book and decorating how-to’s; in 2007, she was awarded the Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her services to literature.
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