The woman of substance

Barbara Taylor Bradford's first novel, A Woman of Substance, is one of the biggest selling novels of all time, and Emma Harte, her powerful heroine, went on to inspire women the world over. Yet Barbara's rise to fame and fortune was not an easy one. She came from humble beginnings in Yorkshire, but her drive, ambition and desire to triumph was to reap huge dividends when she took the Yorkshire Evening Post and then London's Fleet Street by storm. But the imagination works in remarkable ways. For what Piers Dudgeon discovered - to Barbara's shock - is that Emma Harte's rise from Edwardian kitchen maid, single and pregnant, to one of the richest women in the world, bears an uncanny resemblance to Barbara's own family history - about which she was previously unaware.