Hi there
It’s one of those rare days when a sweater after a pond swim is NOT required! The trees are fluttering with summer abundance; troops of ducks speed overhead and the water is alive with smiling swimmers. I helped one of my pond friends up the steps today; she’s 87 and still swimming every day, although she’s now “short of puff” as she says, so she doesn’t swim as far. I hope I’m still in the pond in my ninth decade!
I had a moment of ‘life-circularity’ this week, that sense of golden threads running through the years. I went to the memorial service of a woman I was proud to call a friend: Barbara Taylor Bradford, aka “BTB”, author of A Woman of Substance, a novel about a Yorkshire lass who finds herself pregnant and on her uppers at 16 and rises to build a global empire. Forty years after it was first published, it is still in print, with 30 million copies sold. That makes it one of the top 10 bestselling books of all time!
I first read the book on holiday in Greece as a teenager. That was just after the bonk-busting TV miniseries of A Woman of Substance, featuring Jenny Seagrove as heroine Emma Harte, hit Channel 4 with a mighty 13.5 million audience (its biggest ever).
I remember being captivated by the story of an (extra)ordinary girl who through grit, talent and determination makes it bigger than she ever dreamed. It was the Yorkshire-lass corollary to Shirley Conran’s more cosmopolitan Lace. Alongside other ’80s female icons as Margaret Thatcher (whatever you think of her politics, she was a beacon of female possibility), Emma Harte and BTB encouraged us to dream big, to break glass ceilings and not be defined by what women had done in the past.
What it’s like to read BTB now
In the opening chapter of A Woman of Substance, Emma – a Queenager and grandmother – looks out of her private jet at the blue sky and thinks of her Yorkshire beginnings and her favourite grandchild, whom she is grooming to take over the empire. We’re presented with a successful, self-made woman looking back over her life, still feeling young inside and competent and dynamic – and stressing how one of her key superpowers was the capacity “never to lie to herself” and to be “tireless and obsessive” in her business focus.
It reads now like a (slightly exhausting) manual for ‘Having it All’ – all that epic DOING and burning AMBITION. But this is ladylike ambition: Emma is beautiful and a woman with an “innate sense of good taste” (this phrase is used almost more than any other in the book). She navigates a cutthroat world always dressed immaculately with a string of pearls and “done” hair. It’s very of its time. I would hope now that women who break the mould don’t have to conform as much now as they did then.
Having been so influenced by BTB growing up, I was very excited when I finally got to meet her: I was invited to tea at Claridge’s on a wintry day. She was perfectly coiffed, in pearls and light grey. We drank Earl Grey tea and discussed literacy and the writing competition for girls that we ended up running together for The Sunday Times.
It’s good to remember humble beginnings
Although famous as a novelist, BTB began her working life in the typing pool of The Yorkshire Post, having left school at 15. She started putting her own stories into the copy tray and one day the editor asked: Who is this Barbara Taylor? That’s how she got a job as a junior hack.
What BTB was like in person
BTB never lost her journalistic instincts. She liked me because as Chair of Women in Journalism and a big cheese at The Sunday Times. I was in the swing of everything that was happening. She loved talking politics (she could be alarmingly Trumpian – she LOVED Texas…and Rupert Murdoch. Hmmm). But she was hilariously funny, acute and warm. And she really cared about the next generation of girls being encouraged to write. She flew in from New York to give out the prizes herself for the Sunday Times writing competition for girls.
When I left the paper and was working on my own novel during lockdown (it’s still in the works), she remained a great friend and supporter, not only sending vintage Champagne to my family every Christmas but spending hours on the phone discussing plots. (There is a special place in my heart for the people who were there for me after my whacking. Do you have someone like this who has unexpectedly been there for you in times of angst? Let me know.)
Although I was writing a novel based on a magic mushroom retreat, which wasn’t exactly core BTB territory, she loved the characters and the drama inherent in the situation and gave me wonderful, extremely generous advice. It was impossible to have a short call with her – 10 minutes would turn into 90 – punctuated by interruptions from her beloved dogs and backchat with her beloved husband Bob. He produced all the TV dramas made from her books and who acted as her agent and negotiator – they were an amazing team.
She’d be speaking from her penthouse (where else?) in Manhattan, and I could picture her in strings of pearls and huge diamonds and emeralds (she had incredible jewellery) looking out over the Upper East Side. But despite the fame, riches and glamour, she was kind, generous and down to earth. Despite the fame and trappings, she was a Yorkshire lass and a journalist at heart.
Her memorial was one of the best I have ever attended. At St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street (the journalists’ church) we sang Jerusalem, Amazing Grace and Lord of All Hopefulness and listened to beautiful renditions of Pie Jesu, Danny Boy and Fly Me to the Moon.
Cherie Blair said, “BTB inspired millions of women including me”; Jenny Seagrove and her publishers spoke with real love about her. It was a wonderful celebration of a life well lived – and like many of our Queenagers, BTB was childfree. Her books were her children and her life. And what a legacy she left.
What does a woman of substance mean?
There was much discussion about what BTB meant by “a woman of substance”. Jenny Seagrove said the definition included being a woman of “integrity, honour, discipline and self-belief”. She quoted BTB’s mother, who advised her when left Yorkshire to take up her first journalistic job in London: “Don’t flirt and only have one drink”.Seagrove said that in the 40 years since the miniseries aired on TV, thousands of women have said to her: “Emma Harte changed my life. She made me believe I could be anything.”
The book is once again being turned into a TV drama “to encourage another generation”. More evidence about the enduring power of vision and passion.
And I can’t help but love that the message of a woman – put into words decades ago – still has meaning for women today.
A drumbeat in my life
Personally, I feel A Woman of Substance has been a drumbeat, a kind of totem in my own life. The fact that I grew up reading BTB and then was lucky enough to work with her and become her friend was a marker to me of how far I had come; that something that was an impossible dream when I was a confused teenager setting out on the world could became a reality.
While reading it on a beach in Greece aged 15, with my godmother (we both had our noses in it), we giggled about “her innate sense of good taste” and wondering whether that applied to a Greek chap who had entered the water in front of us with alarmingly small white speedos, then displayed entirely transparent trunks as he emerged from the waves.
The memorial on Thursday was a moment of coming full circle: From young girl aspiring to be someone in the literary world to attending the service of a true literary icon, having earnt my place at the celebration of this woman’s life.
Why BTB chimes with the NOON community
It also made me think about all of you Queenagers. BTB was writing up till her late 80s. She is a reminder that it is never too late and we are never too old to have a crack at what we really wanted to be. I know BTB – who was described by Liam Neeson at the memorial as “Elegant, brilliant and unstoppable” (very Queenager) – would have appreciated the spirit of this community of Queenagers.
In last week’s Circle, I heard about how one of you learnt to fly as a way out of a midlife collision (read Nushin’s Transformation Story here), while another who has been depressed took herself off to Bali and became a yoga teacher at 56. (!)
That sense of “not done yet”, of the world being there for the taking is very Emma Harte. That can-do spirit, of never saying never, of not giving up, is at the heart of A Woman of Substance … and at NOON.
BTB would understand that even the best of us have times in our lives when the going gets tough, when we need the support of other women who have walked the path and who understand. We are all Women of Substance finding our way into a new phase a new chapter.
Make this a summer of substance
In that spirit, do please come and join us at one of our summer events.
- I’ll be talking to another literary Queenager icon – Raynor Winn – on July 10th at the UPP Picture House in Oxford, along with a NOON/Tech Pixies private showing of the new film
- We have one of our signature Wasing retreats on July 18 (there are a few spots left)
- We’re moving the London Circle to a swanky new venue on July 2nd (and there are loads of others now around the country.
- And our July online Circle has just been listed on Thursday July 3rd at 6pm to 7.30pm
Come join us – and celebrate what a being a woman of substance means now.
Much love,
Eleanor xx
