Barbara Taylor Bradford: 'I don’t believe in guilt... I like myself’
Taylor Bradford, married for 50 years: 'I might no longer have the jewels, but I’ll still have the man’
The Telegraph - 10 Nov 2013
A throw pillow on Barbara Taylor Bradford’s side of the bed is embroidered with the words: “You are divine.” I know this because I’m standing in the bestselling novelist’s bedroom, being shown a photograph of Chammi, her recently deceased bichon frisé.
“It’s been over a month but I still daren’t take her bed away from beneath my desk,” she admits with a sad smile. “Still, in 17 years she was only ill for that one day, which isn’t bad, is it?”
Stoicism and longevity are qualities Taylor Bradford must have passed on to her beloved dog. The 80-year-old author, who has been writing since the age of 10 – when she sold her first story to the local paper in Leeds for seven shillings and sixpence – is to publish her 29th book in February, and has been married to the same man for nearly 50 years.
Then there’s her face: bright and unlined, with an old Hollywood glamour to those peaked brows and a nostalgic lilt to her mouth, it’s still that of the sassy young Fleet Street journalist in the old pictures on her dressing table.
Taylor Bradford’s world would be just a bit too Dorian Grey if it weren’t all about to change, though. In two weeks’ time, the novelist is moving out of the 5,000 sq ft river-view Manhattan penthouse she and her husband, TV producer Robert Bradford, have shared for 18 years (she’s sold it to Uma Thurman), the Biedermeier furniture is going – “It’s too big and all you have to do is breathe on it for a piece to fall off” – and the vintage Balmain and Pauline Trigère dresses hanging on a set of rails in the sitting room are being given to charity. Finally, on December 5, she is auctioning off a collection of jewellery given to her by her husband over half a century, with the proceeds to be left to three unnamed female heirs.
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