Born May 5, 1933. Barbara Taylor Bradford was born in Leeds, and by the age of twenty was an editor and columnist on Fleet Street. Her first novel, A Woman of Substance, became an enduring bestseller and was followed by twenty-one others. Her books have sold more than 75 million copies worldwide in more than ninety countries and forty languages, and ten miniseries and television movies have been made from them. A member of the Writers Hall of Fame, she lives in New York City with her husband, television producer Robert Bradford.