Best-selling British author Barbara Taylor Bradford comes to Escondido

By: RUTH MARVIN WEBSTER - Staff Writer | Saturday, January 6, 2007 6:39 PM PST ∞

Barbara Taylor Bradford will present a discussion/book signing for her new book, "The Ravenscar Dynasty," at 7 p.m. Friday at the Escondido Public Library, 239 S. Kalmia St., Escondido. Call (760) 839-4683. The event is free, but only books purchased at the event will be signed.

Turns out, snagging the telephone interview was the easy part. Coming up with something new to ask Barbara Taylor Bradford, reputedly the highest-earning British woman after the Queen and a best-selling novelist who has sold more than 76 million copies, was the challenge.

"Hello, Ms. Bradford?" I say after phoning her New York penthouse ---- the Upper East Side one with 14 interior doors.

"Ruth," comes the response. It was uttered with such warmth and refinement, Bradford truly sounded as if we were old friends sitting down for a cup of tea and a chat. "How would it be if you call me Barbara and I will call you Ruth?"

Inducted into the Writers Hall of Fame of America alongside legends such as Mark Twain, Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway, Bradford is the author of 22 best-selling novels that emphasize women who have overcome great obstacles. Her best known work was her first, "A Woman of Substance," which ranks as one of the top 10 best-selling novels in history and was made into a popular TV movie starring Deborah Kerr. Many of her novels have been produced for television.

Understandably, Bradford --- I mean Barbara --- was interested in speaking about her newest book, "The Ravenscar Dynasty," which was just released Tuesday. She will also be at the Escondido Public Library at 7 p.m. Friday to discuss and sign the book.

For "Ravenscar," Bradford says, she had wanted to write about 15th-century King Edward IV, but knew her publisher did not want a historical novel. So she took her main character, as well as the drama and intrigue surrounding the Lancasters and Yorks, England's two most powerful 15th-century families ---- and placed them in the post-Victorian era, at the turn of the 20th century.

"People ask me how I can take a medieval king and update it," she says. "Our manners have changed and we may talk differently, but human nature hasn't changed. Essentially we are the same; there are loving natures and wicked natures. It is the human condition."

The time shift posed unique problems, she says, because her characters were titans of the industrial age rather than medieval royalty.

"The book was a tremendous challenge," Bradford says. "I had to kill them off without a court case or having them go to jail" ---- more modern methods. Neither, she says, could she have a battle "in the middle of Trafalgar Square."

Bradford is quick to point out that it is the writing (on her IBM Selectric, though she does admit to using the computer for research) in which she delights. "With each new book, it's a new set of characters, an adventure," says the 74-year-old New York resident.

"It is exciting to create lives out of nothing and make things up. With each book, I've been playing God again," she adds with a mischievous giggle.

"I am very excited about this new book," she says. "The Daily Express said they think it is a sure hit. Once you get into it, I think people will like it and won't be able to put it down."

With "The Ravenscar Dynasty," Bradford begins a new series, a sweeping saga of the Deravanel family, that will continue with her following book, already titled "The Ravenscar Heir," due out next year.

Bradford mentions she has always written quite strong women characters, so I ask whether she would consider herself a feminist. Probably not, she says, as she has never been a member of a women's rights organization or part of the feminist movement.

"I think there are a lot of women who have to work hard to make their success happen without any organization helping them," she says.

Bradford is clearly such a strong woman. Born in Leeds, the only child to a working-class couple who struggled to give their only daughter advantages they never had, Bradford began as a typist at the Yorkshire Evening Post at age 17. By 18, she had risen to become the newspaper's Women's Page Editor. Two years later, she was a fashion editor for Women's Own, a London-based national magazine. Then, in the '60s, she met and married Bob Bradford, an American television producer.

She broke out in 1979 with the publication of her first novel, "A Woman of Substance," which went on to sell more than 20 million copies. The romantic saga chronicling the rise of Emma Harte to department-store tycoon stayed on The New York Times best-seller list for 15 months.

Soon, we are talking about how the Bradfords plan to celebrate their wedding anniversary ("we'll go out to dinner with friends," she says), when Bradford's dogs start barking. She excuses herself for a moment.

"Girls, girls," she coos in the background. "Come on, chickens, there we are. Good girls."

"They bark when they hear the elevator," she explains of her two bichon frises.

I have read she adores her beloved dogs, and I ask their names and ages. "Chammie and Bee-jee, for Champagne and Bijou," she says. "They are 10 years old and cousins."

I don't know why I feel the need to tell her I had a bichon once that we named Lambchop after the puppet character. She seems politely interested. "Gemmy died when she was 12," she offers. "She had surgery for her knee and died later of an aneurysm."

I ask whether she enjoys book tours. "The fun part of being a writer is the writing," she says diplomatically, so I press her again. "Well, you can't go out with a bad attitude. The thing is, they are quite a good thing for me ---- to go out and see the readers and talk to the people."

Has she visited Escondido before? She hasn't been to the West Coast in several years. "I have been to La Jolla," she says. "I bought a very nice painting there once."

Because she is hailed as the late Princess Diana's favorite writer, I ask for her thoughts on today's British monarchy. "They're boring," Bradford says simply, adding that former Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson is a friend of hers and has turned out to be a true "woman of substance" since her divorce.

Does Bradford secretly aspire to be named a dame by the Queen one day? "Becoming a dame doesn't matter to me. I live in America," she says. "I want to do my work, have my husband, do what I do and to be healthy. That is what is important."

Before we close, I return to the feminist question. After all, Bradford has been dubbed the "Grande Dame of Modern Women's Literature" as well as the "First Lady of Fiction."

"I never set out to be a feminist and I don't send a message," she says. "But I think it is still a man's world. And do I think women are as talented, as smart and as capable as men? Perhaps even more so. Then am I a feminist? I suppose I am."

Contact staff writer Ruth Marvin Webster at (760) 740-3527 or rwebster@nctimes.com.

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