Women’s success a winner

Press, 30 September 1986, Page 9

Women’s success a winner

The author, Barbara Taylor Bradford, has hit on a foolproof formula for success — successful women.

Mrs Bradford, writer of the bestseller which later became a television series, “A Woman of Substance,” has been in Christchurch to promote her latest novel, “Act of Will.”

“I write about women living up to their full potential, be it through a career or a family — that is why women like them; they find them inspirational.”

Mrs Bradford said her books, which include “Hold the Dream,” a sequel to “A Woman of Substance,” and “Voice of the Heart,” are successful because they tell a good story and create vivid and believable characters. “There is a lot of emotion on the paper, women can identify with the story in many different ways,” she said. “It is not escapist or fantasy fiction, it’s real.”

She said her underlying theme was always the indomitable nature of the human spirit. “All the world loves someone who triumphs.” Her characters have not been based on specific people, rather on her observations of people gen-

erally, but the main character in "Act of Will” is built round her own mother.

“There is a lot about my parents in the novel,” said Mrs Bradford, who was born in England but now lives in New York with her husband, a film producer, Robert Bradford.

“Usually though the characters grow and change organically as I write.”

“A Woman of Substance” took her two years to write, and its international success came as rather a shock.

“I was so involved with the book I could no longer

make a real judgment on how it held together. Ail I thought was that it was so North Country it would only appeal to a few people.” The novel has now sold 12 million copies as well as having been made into a television series. “Hold the Dream” and “Voice of the Heart” will also be televised. . Mrs Bradford began her career as a typist, then worked as a reporter on the “Yorkshire Evening Post.” When she was 20 she left for London and a job as fashion editor of “Woman’s Own” magazine followed by reporting on the "Evening News.” In 1963 she married and moved to New York, and for the next 11 years wrote fashion, beauty, and celebrity news for various United States newspapers. Her plans include writing a continuation to “Hold the Dream,” entitled “To Be the Best;” completing a novel centred on a dynasty of business women, and writing a contemporary dramatic novel set in France and the United States. “They are all very emotional — I like sentimentality, the more we have of it the better the place we live in.”