Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest in this interview

first broadcast in September 2009 is the best-selling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford, who has died at the age of 91.

Known as the Grand Dame of Blockbusters, her talent for storytelling made her one of the richest women in

Britain. Taylor Bradford grew up in a working-class family in Yorkshire. She says she was force-fed

books by her mother and had her first story published in a children's magazine at the age of 10.

She left school at 15 and became the sole female reporter on the Yorkshire

Evening Post. Her first foray into fiction then brought mind-boggling success. The 1979 novel,

A Woman of Substance, sold 30 million copies and spawned a TV adaptation, which remains the most

watched program on Britain's Channel 4.

It was the first of 40 novels by Taylor Bradford. I spoke to her 15 years ago to mark the

publication of her 25th novel. Her most recent book, The Wonder of It All, was published just last

year. She was renowned for her portrayals of strong women overcoming life slings and arrows.

Was she, in the words of her most celebrated work, a woman of substance?

Barbara Taylor Bradford, welcome to Hard Talk.

It's nice to be here, Stephen. Thank you.

It's a pleasure to have you.

Now, you are still prolific. You've just

published a 25th novel, but I'm wondering whether your writing matters as much to you today

as it did when you set out. Oh, absolutely. I don't really have to work ever again if I don't want to.

But first of all, what would I do?

I've always worked.

But writing a novel for me is an adventure.

...