Barbara Taylor Bradford

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty five, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

This week, our castaway is the best-selling novelist, Barbara Taylor Bradford.

Presenter0:34

Barbara, does music mean a lot to you?

Barbara Taylor Bradford0:37

Oh yes, and it always has, since I was a child, as a matter of fact, Roy.

Presenter0:41

Do you play an instrument?

Barbara Taylor Bradford0:42

No, I don't, only a typewriter.

Presenter0:44

Do you sometimes play disc while you're working or do you like quiet?

Barbara Taylor Bradford0:48

Not when I'm actually writing, because I must have total quiet, but I will often play something that I know will evoke a mood in me that I can transfer to the character to put on paper.

Presenter0:59

Now this list that I got here of your eight records, is there any kind of pattern in the list?

Presenter1:06

Is it mostly personal nostalgia?

Barbara Taylor Bradford1:06

Is it m

Barbara Taylor Bradford1:09

Yes, I would say. Personal nostalgia and perhaps a couple have to do with a couple of my novels.

Presenter1:16

What's the first one?

Barbara Taylor Bradford1:17

First one is

Barbara Taylor Bradford1:19

Unbell D from Madden Butterfly.

Presenter1:21

One fine day

Barbara Taylor Bradford1:22

One Fine Day, sung by Renata Tibaldi. And that is the first operatic aria I remember actually hearing on a record at home when I was a child. My mother loved opera, and I'm sure I heard others, but this is the one that stuck in my mind. And it's always been a great favourite, perhaps because it was a favourite of hers, and it was in fact the first opera I ever went to see.

Speaker 42:00

Oil baby.

Speaker 42:06

When I cross

Speaker 42:37

I wish I need more.

Presenter2:46

One Fine Day from Madam Butterfly sung by Renata Tibaldi

Presenter2:51

Although based in the United States for many years, Barbara, you were in fact born in this country.

Barbara Taylor Bradford2:56

Yes, I was born in Leeds, Yorkshire.

Presenter2:59

How do you remember Leeds as a small girl? Was your childhood a happy time?

Barbara Taylor Bradford3:04

It was I was an only child.

Barbara Taylor Bradford3:07

My parents are both dead now, but I was very, very close to them. And of course, the great joy of my life is that they were both still alive when I wrote A Woman of Substance and when it was published and they were able to see that success. And my mother said to me when I handed her the printed published book, Well, it's the fulfilment of your childhood dream and indeed it was, because I'd always wanted to be a novelist. My childhood was happy and I was very close, as I said, to my parents and remained close to them.

Presenter3:39

Did you live in the centre of the city?

Barbara Taylor Bradford3:40

No, we lived outside Leeds, actually between Leeds and Bradford.

Presenter3:45

Yeah.

Barbara Taylor Bradford3:46

in a place called Upper Armley.

Presenter3:48

And despite the fact that he had quite a bad disability from the First World War, and to some extent the family had to live on short commons, your father sent you to a very good private school.

Barbara Taylor Bradford3:59

Yes, yes, you did. I went to a Church of England school until I was about eight or nine, and then I went to a girls' private school where I learned French and shorthand and typing and all of those other things. Yes, my father lost a leg in the First World War. He was in the navy.

Barbara Taylor Bradford4:17

and just towards the end of the war, and the only real character in a woman of substance who based on a real person is Winston, her brother, who is based on my father, who was called Winston Taylor, and was in the Navy and lost a leg, as did her brother.

Presenter4:33

Let's have your second record. What's that?

Barbara Taylor Bradford4:35

It's Over the Sea to Sky, which is the first song I remember learning to sing at school, at that church school, Christ Church, in Armley.

Presenter4:46

And who would you like to sing it now?

Barbara Taylor Bradford4:47

I would love to have Moira Anderson singing it.

Speaker 44:52

Float like a buddy all the sailors comply

Speaker 45:03

The land was born to be king over the sweet sky.

Speaker 45:14

Overweight heeps.

Speaker 45:17

Shall you see oceans of loyal band?

Speaker 45:25

Walked in the dream work deep, walked by your weary hand.

Speaker 45:37

Eat money watch like the blood of the wheel.

Presenter5:45

Moira Anderson singing The Sky Boat Song. Did you read a lot as a child?

Barbara Taylor Bradford5:50

Yes, and my mother was a a voracious reader, and when I was very small I had a library card at whatever age you had to be to first get one, then I had it. I think I was five or six or something like that.

Presenter6:00

I think I

Barbara Taylor Bradford6:03

By the time I was twelve I'd read the whole of Dickens and

Barbara Taylor Bradford6:08

devoured books as she had done, and when I was twelve sold a story to a children's magazine, so my destiny was set, Roy. You know, I saw my name in print, yes.

Presenter6:18

I named it Bryn.

Presenter6:19

But that's what you wanted to do, you wanted to write.

Barbara Taylor Bradford6:21

I wanted to write novels. I did take out a lot of books on journalism from the library, the local library in Leeds. And I knew, of course, that I couldn't start writing novels at the age of 16 or 17. I could, but I probably wouldn't sell them and not make a living. So I told my parents I wanted to go and work on a newspaper and be a journalist. And they said fine. They had wanted me to go to Leeds University. And I said, no, you don't get a training at Leeds University, not to be a journalist anyway. And so they said, all right, try it on the paper if you can get a job.

Barbara Taylor Bradford6:58

And I had to promise them that if I didn't like it, I would leave and go to university.

Presenter7:02

Did you get a job in LEED?

Barbara Taylor Bradford7:04

Yes, I got a job on the Yorkshire Evening Post, actually as a typist. That was my first job. And about six months after that, I got shifted to the reporter's room where I was what is known as a cub reporter. And the person who took me under his wing and looked after me was a man called Keith Waterhouse. And Keith and I actually shared a desk. We had a desk each, but we faced each other as we are facing each other now. And Keith was my mentor, if you like, on the Yorkshire Evening Post. Of course, and we're still good friends.

Presenter7:34

Yeah.

Presenter7:37

Do you remember any particular stories that you went out on when you were very young as a Cub reporter?

Barbara Taylor Bradford7:43

No, not anything very specific that was world shaking. Of course, I did cover all these things that seemed unlikely for a girl to cover because any Cub reporter was given the tedious job of what was called the police rounds, and that was going to the coroner's court, to the infirmary in Leeds, to the the hospital, to the emergency room for accidents and those sort of things, and then phoning in the information and they just made little squibs, you know. And it was just routine stuff.

Presenter7:57

Yeah.

Presenter8:11

Uh

Barbara Taylor Bradford8:13

Then at eighteen I became women's page editor, which was really very young.

Barbara Taylor Bradford8:18

For a paper like the Yorkshire Evening Post. And they said, Well, do you think you can do this job now that the women's page editor's left? After all, you have been writing some of the pages. And I said, Oh, yes, I'd love to try. And the editor looked at me and said, Mind you, we can't pay you any more money. And I thought, Oh, they're getting me cheap, but I was delighted to have that byline on the women's pages.

Presenter8:35

Thank you.

Presenter8:36

Then I

Barbara Taylor Bradford8:40

And I left, of course, when I was twenty and uh came to London.

Presenter8:44

Do you remember any particular series you commissioned when you were woman's page editor?

Barbara Taylor Bradford8:48

We did a lot of interviews with well known people in Leeds which they had not done before. You know I might take a model who was quite well known in Yorkshire and do a whole thing about her life and her lifestyle. And whenever any actors or actresses came to Leeds I would go over and and do interviews with them for the women's pages, which had not really been done before. I think I was in many ways quite ahead of my time. Everybody does that today, but they weren't doing it thirty years ago.

Presenter9:16

And then off to the big city, off to Fleet Street.

Barbara Taylor Bradford9:18

You're off to Fleet Street.

Presenter9:19

To work on what?

Barbara Taylor Bradford9:20

Woman's Own as Fashion Editor.

Presenter9:23

That was a a responsible job.

Barbara Taylor Bradford9:25

Yes, it was. I got a bit tired though, because I had to always wear hats instead of a dirty trench coat and try and explain to women how they could make two dresses, five tablecloths and three tea towels out of four yards of toweling. You know, it was always those budget things and whatever, as well as doing a bit of fashion.

Barbara Taylor Bradford9:48

And I was happy to go back to newspapers after one year on Woman's Own.

Presenter9:53

Let's have another record, what's number three?

Barbara Taylor Bradford9:56

Record number three, Roy, is Oh My Beloved Father, sung by Joan Hammond. I'm choosing this because I've always liked it and it was one of my father's favorite operatic arias.

Speaker 410:48

Yeah.

Speaker 410:58

Oh baby.

Presenter11:10

Joan Hammond singing O My Beloved Father from Puccini's Giannischi.

Presenter11:16

So we left you on Woman's Own. What happened next?

Barbara Taylor Bradford11:20

I left Woman's Own after one year, Roy, not because I was really unhappy there, I mean I did quite enjoy it. I was making a joke there about not wanting to wear hats and trying to make 9,000 things out of one small piece of fabric. I really felt that I was a newspaper woman and I wanted to go back to newspapers. So indeed after that year I went to the London Evening News where I was a feature writer and covered women's page things too, but was doing other sort of reporting which I enjoyed. I really liked to be out in the Hurley Burley and of course what I did miss when I was on a magazine is being in the centre of everything happening in the world. That's the marvellous thing about a newspaper office. You know what's happening instantly everywhere.

Presenter11:55

Yeah.

Presenter12:08

Cause

Barbara Taylor Bradford12:08

And I still miss that now, actually.

Presenter12:11

And from being a reporter you became an editor.

Barbara Taylor Bradford12:14

Yes, I went to work on a newspaper called The London American, which was a weekly paper published in England for Americans living here. Of course, a lot of the English bought it. It went to all the bases. And I was executive editor of that paper and also did the women's pages.

Presenter12:31

Had you been to the United States at that time?

Barbara Taylor Bradford12:33

Yes, I had been to the United States, but I had not uh lived there just on holiday.

Presenter12:37

So you met a lot of Americans. In fact, you married one of them.

Barbara Taylor Bradford12:42

Tell me

Presenter12:42

Tell me about him.

Barbara Taylor Bradford12:43

Robert Bradford, I met in about nineteen sixty one when we were

Presenter12:47

One of your regular readers?

Barbara Taylor Bradford12:48

No, he was a friend of a friend.

Barbara Taylor Bradford12:51

She was living in New York and he had known her for years and she said, When you get to London, would you please do me a favour and ring Barbara, who was an old friend and was expecting me this summer and she explained she'd broken her ribs. So after about two weeks in London I think he suddenly remembered, Oh, must ring that young woman, which he did. He was here on film business because he's in the movie business. He he produces movies and he packages movies, which means getting the elements together for someone else, but he does produce. And he relayed the message and said, Would you like to have a drink? And uh we did have a drink. In fact we had dinner. And uh that was it.

Barbara Taylor Bradford13:32

And about a year and a half later we got married in December of 1963 on Christmas Eve.

Speaker 413:39

Yeah.

Presenter13:39

Uh

Barbara Taylor Bradford13:39

And then in the February of sixty four I went to live in America because of course he was living there.

Presenter13:46

In New York.

Barbara Taylor Bradford13:47

In New York and in California, because he is a Hollywood producer and he was commuting between both places, both coasts, so I did that too. But I prefer New York.

Presenter13:58

Right.

Barbara Taylor Bradford13:59

And we live right in the middle of Manhattan.

Presenter14:01

Let's have record number four.

Barbara Taylor Bradford14:03

Record number four Roy, I think I would love to have Amazing Grace.

Presenter14:08

Yes.

Barbara Taylor Bradford14:09

My mother loved that hymn, and so did my father, but I would like to choose one with the Scots Dragoon Guards, because I love the bagpipes, and my grandfather Taylor, Alfred Taylor, was a sergeant major in the Seaforth Highlanders, and of course when I was a child, he was no longer in the Seaforth Highlanders, but I was a special favourite of his.

Barbara Taylor Bradford14:34

and I would sit on his knee and he would tell me stories about his adventures when he was a soldier. So I think the bagpipes are appropriate.

Presenter15:31

Amazing Grace by the pipes and drums in the military band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.

Presenter15:38

So you were married and settled on living in Manhattan.

Presenter15:42

How long was it before you began to write seriously?

Barbara Taylor Bradford15:46

Well of course I did continue my career as a journalist Roy and wrote a a syndicated column which was published in the New York Daily News and 185 other newspapers on design and architecture and lifestyle. But around 1968 I thought if I'm going to write a novel I really must do it now. And I'd always wanted to be a novelist.

Presenter16:07

Yes. Had you a subject that had been nagging for years?

Barbara Taylor Bradford16:10

No, I didn't think I had at the time, but anyway, around nineteen sixty-eight.

Barbara Taylor Bradford16:15

nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy, up to nineteen seventy three. In that period I started, but never finished, four novels.

Presenter16:24

Had you cut adrift from your journalistic

Barbara Taylor Bradford16:27

No, I was still writing the column and I ha had also written a number of non fiction books on interior design and architecture and the sort of thing I was doing in the column.

Presenter16:37

And this sort of thing

Barbara Taylor Bradford16:39

Those books I thought were wrong and I didn't like them and I didn't know why.

Barbara Taylor Bradford16:44

I know now, but at the time I didn't. But I did abandon them. And then in 1974 I had gave myself a lecture. I was going to say I had a revelation, but I didn't really. I did ask myself a lot of questions and say, now if you're going to write this novel, you're going to have to do it. And that was the lecture part. And then I did ask a lot of questions. What do you want to write about? And what kind of story do you want to tell? And to cut a rather long, tedious story short, I came to the conclusion that I should write about England, specifically Yorkshire, because I'm English and I come from Yorkshire and I understand the English better than I understand the Americans or the French.

Barbara Taylor Bradford17:24

And I suddenly thought, Well, what kind of story do you want to write? and I said, I want to write about a woman who becomes a woman of substance. And I wrote that down, and it never changed. The title always remained A Woman of Substance. And I very quickly realized that to tell a dramatic and interesting story, I couldn't have this woman becoming a corporate power, a woman with a great business empire today, because a lot of women are doing that. To make it really truly dramatic, I would have to set it back in time.

Presenter17:56

Yeah.

Barbara Taylor Bradford17:56

And in in the early 1900s, which is what I did.

Presenter17:59

And of course, from three thousand miles away you were writing about Leeds, you had to get your facts right. You couldn't research it all in New York, could you?

Barbara Taylor Bradford18:07

No, and I didn't really need any research for the first two hundred pages, but then I realised as I went back from the present to nineteen oh two and nineteen oh three that I didn't know anything about that period of time and that I certainly didn't know anything about the clothing industry in Yorkshire or why wool is made in Yorkshire even though I'd grown up there. So I did come home and spend about five weeks and I researched in the libraries in Leeds. I also had a war to research, the First World War, so I did a lot of that in the Imperial War Museum and as I say spent about five weeks digging into the Edwardian era, which of course it was. It was late Victorian, early Edwardian era. And people did do things differently and speak differently in those days. And I found a book on manners and running a household and what the footman wore and all that sort of thing, because of course I did have the gentry as opposed to the Hart family. And then went back to the States and continued to write.

Presenter19:10

It's a good long book, eight hundred and sixty six pages. Did you set out to write a long one, or or did it just go on and on?

Barbara Taylor Bradford19:17

No, it went on and on, and I suddenly said one day to Bob, My God, here I am I'm up to page five hundred, and she's still a child.

Presenter19:25

How many copies of this thick tome have you sold?

Barbara Taylor Bradford19:30

Altogether, with the hard cover in every country and the paperback and book clubs, it is about ten million. It's heading towards eleven million copies in all editions, in all languages.

Presenter19:44

Eleven million copies. And an international television six R version spread over three years.

Barbara Taylor Bradford19:50

Yes, oh yes. Which was a big hit here. It took fifty seven percent of the ratings in Great Britain when it was shown, and the same in the States. It was a tremendous hit in New York and of course right across America.

Presenter20:04

Record number five.

Barbara Taylor Bradford20:05

Record number five is Danny Boy, and there's a reason for that. In A Woman of Substance, Emma Hart is a little girl walking over the Yorkshire moors on the way to Fairleigh Hall where she is a servant, is terrified she's marching along, singing on with Christian Soldiers, because she's rather afraid of all the fog and it's very early in the morning, and she hears a rumbling noise and is even more terrified, and then from the fog emerges Blackie O'Neill.

Presenter20:09

And the zoo

Barbara Taylor Bradford20:34

who is a navvy on his way to Fairleigh Hall to repair the chimneys and the flues, and he becomes her lifelong friend. And as they're walking along the moors he bursts forth into Danny Boy, because he's an Irishman who has come from Ireland to live in Yorkshire, as many of the Irish did in those days. And whenever I hear Danny Boy I think of Blackie and Emma,

Presenter20:59

Well, who's to take Blackie's place on this disc?

Barbara Taylor Bradford21:02

Robert White.

Speaker 421:06

Back when Summer's in the middle.

Speaker 421:14

What a win with

Speaker 421:18

He's a horse.

Speaker 421:27

Design.

Speaker 421:41

Danny boy, oh Danny boy. I love you so.

Presenter21:54

Danny Boy sung by Robert White.

Presenter21:57

A woman of substance put you in the position of someone who would never have to work again, but you went straight to work on another one, Voice of the Heart. Was that one that was also in your mind?

Barbara Taylor Bradford22:10

Not in the way that a woman of substance was. I was working on an outline for another book when quite out of the blue something happened in my life. A friend who had quarrelled with me and we had not spoken for ten years came back to New York and asked to see me through a mutual friend. And I said, Oh dear, I'm not too sure about seeing her.

Barbara Taylor Bradford22:34

And then the mutual friend said, But she is dying.

Barbara Taylor Bradford22:38

So I said, Well, then, of course, I will see her. And she wanted to make her peace with me and with a number of other people with whom she had quarrelled. And afterwards, this gave me the idea for Voice of the Heart, because indeed that book is about a woman who comes back in nineteen seventy nine, having been absent for a number of years, to see a lot of people that she has hurt, and her reason for the returning to America from Europe is because she too is dying. And that is the basis of the book. But the storyline is about um

Barbara Taylor Bradford23:11

I would say it's about roads people didn't take and wish they had taken later on as they looked back. It's about what we do to each other in the name of love and friendship.

Barbara Taylor Bradford23:21

both good and bad, and it's about memory and memories and our past coming back to hit us in the face if you like again.

Presenter23:30

Book number three was a sequel to our first book. So we're back with Emma Hart and her family.

Barbara Taylor Bradford23:36

That's right. We're back with mainly her granddaughter Paula, who has been schooled to take over the Empire, the business empire, and trained by Emma, and does indeed take it over. But Emma's there.

Presenter23:47

But Emma's there. We're now in a very very lush setting. I mean Emma Hart at the beginning was a a fairly humble person, but now there are tycoons in every corner.

Barbara Taylor Bradford23:57

Yes, of course she became an immense tycoon in A Woman of Substance, and Hold the Dream, the sequel to it, starts just one year after A Woman of Substance finishes, so it it's in fact nineteen sixty nine.

Presenter24:10

Do you think you'll pick that lot up again and and do another book about?

Barbara Taylor Bradford24:13

Yes, after I finish the book I'm writing now, which um not to confuse everyone, but it's called Act of Will, I would like to continue the Emma Hart saga with a book about the grandchildren. Obviously it has to continue with the grandchildren who are grown up, they're not small, they're adults.

Presenter24:32

Yeah.

Barbara Taylor Bradford24:33

And it would be called to be the best, which is what she wanted from them, always.

Presenter24:37

Well, that's for the future. Let's have, at the moment, record number six.

Barbara Taylor Bradford24:42

Roy I would like to have Memory from Cats sung by Barbara Streisand

Presenter24:47

Why?

Barbara Taylor Bradford24:48

First time I heard that on a disc was in Zurich in 1982, just after I'd finished Voice of the Heart. And I was emotionally moved by the lyrics and Barbara Streisen's voice. And my husband said, My goodness, you've got tears in your eyes. Whatever is it? Why are you upset? And I said, I thought of Nikki Latimer, and this is one of the characters in Voice of the Heart. I thought of Nikki Latimer and whatever's going to happen to him now that Catherine is dying.

Barbara Taylor Bradford25:20

This sums up what the book was about. It was about memory and memories and the past, and the past coming back and trying to recapture the past.

Presenter25:30

Those characters of yours are very real to you, aren't they?

Barbara Taylor Bradford25:32

Yes, and real to the readers, because a lot of people loved uh Nikki too, as I did.

Speaker 425:39

It's so easy to leave me hard along with the memory of my days in the sun. If you touch me, you'll understand what happiness is.

Barbara Taylor Bradford25:59

And

Presenter26:10

Memory from Cats sung by Barbara Streisand.

Presenter26:14

Two of your books are being filmed, aren't they?

Barbara Taylor Bradford26:17

Yes, Voice of the Heart, which we were just talking about, Roy, is what is known as being scripted at this moment. And that, too, will be a television series produced by NBC and I'm sure it's going to be shown in England. When I say produce, they they don't actually physically produce it. My husband is executive producer, and Hold the Dream is the new book, and we're going to be making that in England, and my husband will be producing that, too.

Presenter26:45

When you write, you write every day and how many words a day?

Barbara Taylor Bradford26:47

Oh yes.

Barbara Taylor Bradford26:50

The words I can't tell you. I feel I'm lucky and that I've had a good day if I get five totally finished pages. And by that I mean pages that I'm satisfied with and that I don't want to rewrite. I work a good ten hours a day, six days a week.

Presenter27:07

That's hard work.

Barbara Taylor Bradford27:08

It is hard work. It's the salt mines, really.

Presenter27:10

Yeah.

Presenter27:11

Write another record.

Barbara Taylor Bradford27:13

What I Would Like To Have Now Roy is a song by Frank Sinatra, it's called You and Me and then in parenthesis We Wanted It All.

Presenter27:25

We're not like the rest.

Presenter27:29

We once were the best.

Presenter27:34

Look what we became.

Presenter27:39

Isn't it a cry and shame?

Presenter27:45

That we almost made it

Presenter27:49

What we wanted is

Presenter27:53

You and me, We Wanted It All, sung by Frank Sinatra. Let's get back to the Desert Island, Barbara. Could you look after yourself? Could you be a Robinson Crusoe?

Barbara Taylor Bradford28:04

Yes, I think I could. I was always very practical as a child. You know,

Presenter28:09

Yeah with your hair.

Barbara Taylor Bradford28:10

Yes, I'm the one at home who will put a nail in a wall and hang a picture and repair something. Not my husband. Um I was brought up during the war when we really had to stand on our in two feet as children, you know, and my mother was working. She was a nurse. I used to come home and

Barbara Taylor Bradford28:28

cook lunch for myself when I came home from school and do things like that. So I'm very practical and I think I could look after myself.

Presenter28:32

So

Presenter28:35

Done any fishing

Barbara Taylor Bradford28:36

No. My aunt and uncle once took me fishing as a child, and I fell in and almost drowned, so

Presenter28:42

Yeah.

Barbara Taylor Bradford28:43

I've never fished again, and I've always had a fear of water ever since that time.

Presenter28:48

So would you try to escape with that fear of water?

Barbara Taylor Bradford28:52

Well, I think I would, yes. I'm very determined. Of course it's all very easy to say yes. I would get off the island. Would I? I would make a good attempt to get off.

Presenter29:03

Fair enough.

Presenter29:04

Your last record.

Barbara Taylor Bradford29:06

The last part of Chariots of Fire by Van Gallis. It is from the movie, as you know, and the last part of Poseidon is called Jerusalem, and it is that marvellous English hymn which I always loved as a child, and I particularly like this recording of it.

Presenter29:53

The Ambrosian singers singing Jerusalem as we heard them do so in the film Chariots of Fire. If you could take only one disc, Barbara, out of the eight you've chosen, which would it be?

Barbara Taylor Bradford30:05

I think it would be the last one, Jerusalem. I find it very inspirational, and I think that one would have to be inspired to endeavour to get off, and to continue to exist until one got off the island.

Presenter30:19

And one luxury to have with you on the island, something that gives you great pleasure to look at or to touch, but is of no practical use.

Barbara Taylor Bradford30:27

and an album of photographs of my husband Bob, my dog Jemmy, and my parents, although they're not alive, for the same reason.

Presenter30:37

And you have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You're allowed one other book as well.

Barbara Taylor Bradford30:43

Wuthering Heights, because I think that it is a book that every time you read it or I read it, I find something different in it that I haven't noticed before. It is a marvellous book of many layers and very emotional to me because it's a very Yorkshire book and I think that it's the one thing that I could read over and over again.

Presenter31:04

Right, you shall have it. And thank you, Barbara Taylor Bradwood, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Barbara Taylor Bradford31:10

Thank you, Roy. It's been absolutely marvellous to be here.

Presenter31:13

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 331:21

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio form.