Having lost him to a stroke aged 92 in July, it took all her tremendous strength of character to keep her tears under control. “I pulled back because there were other people there. I went into the bedroom, blew my nose and said, ‘OK, Barbara, you’re going to unpack now’,” she recalls. “We’ve lived here for 30 years so it was like coming home. Everyone knew Bob. I was unsettled for that moment but I got over that surge of emotion because I knew where everything was. It was home again and by the time I got all my clothes out and put them away I was fine. It’s just a little strange to be on my own all the time.”
Theirs was a marriage as powerful and traditional as any in her hugely popular novels.
Having met the German-born, US-based movie producer in 1961 on a blind date, the couple were together for 57 years and married for 55.
As someone who successfully negotiated a transatlantic marriage, she has some advice for Prince Harry’s wife Meghan Markle: “Don’t marry into that family unless you’re going to play by the rules.
“She has to remember two things: she’s a member of 1,000-year-old monarchy and, also, there is only one star and the name of that star is the Monarch!”
Inseparable until the end, when Bob suffered a stroke, Barbara moved into hospital in New York on a camp bed so she could remain by his side.
Four months later, it is her first visit to London in more than half a century without the most important person in her life. The couple never had children.
Immaculate over tea at The Dorchester in a black Chanel jacket, her blonde hair shining, and looking far younger than her 86 years, she admits: “Perception is what counts. How people perceive you.
“I look alright but I might go upstairs later and cry because I’ve lost that man.”
She has a titanium right hip after a replacement operation in August – “The doctor can’t believe I can walk without a stick already” – and is modestly surprised to find herself in such rude health.
“I don’t smoke, I don’t drink much, I eat carefully. I don’t do much exercise but I’ve been doing it since the op. I call the physical therapist my torturer,” she laughs.
But how does she remain so young-looking?
“My father had great skin and I look like my father. He was in the Royal Navy and women threw themselves at him, much to my mother’s dismay!
“Some women go to bed in their make-up because they don’t want the man to see them without it. I’ve always washed and cleaned my face, I cleanse it a lot and I stay out of the sun.”
Barbara is in the UK this week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of her blockbuster debut novel, A Woman Of Substance – featuring the formidable Emma Harte – and the publication of her latest book, In The Lion’s Den.
She describes James Falconer, the hero of the latter, as a male Emma Harte.
“He’s a barrow boy who wants to grow up to be a merchant prince and own a shop like Fortnum & Mason,” she explains. “But he doesn’t have an easy ride, nor
with the woman he loves.”
Being a Barbara Taylor Bradford character, one wouldn’t bet against his ultimate success. But not before a series of gripping trials and tribulations.
The new book aside, the novelist describes the majority of her books as “matriarchal dynastic family sagas” and believes she invented the genre. With sales of 88 million and counting, it’s been a rich vein.
Born in Leeds to working-class parents, Barbara’s own story is equally inspiring. An older brother, Vivian, died of meningitis before she was born, an especially cruel blow as her mother, Freda Taylor, was a nurse and spotted his symptoms.
From the age of 10, her ambition was to get to Fleet Street. Having joined the typing pool of the Yorkshire Evening Post aged 15, she was a trail-blazing reporter by 16 – mentored by Keith Waterhouse, who would go on to write Billy Liar, and pursued by a “spotty” young Peter O’Toole – before moving to London at 20 and eventually becoming one of Fleet Street’s first female reporters.
Friends wonder aloud why, despite her OBE, she hasn’t been honoured with a damehood for services to literature and charity.
She is planning an autobiography, much to her publisher’s delight, and has been thinking a lot about her early life and career.
“My mother said to me when I went from the typists’ pool to the newsroom, ‘You’re not to flirt, you’re not encourage them. You’ve not gone there to meet a man, you’ve gone there to be a journalist’. She told me, ‘Keep your head down and do your work. If one of them invites you out and he’s single you go, but no married men’.”
There was one great love before Bob, another American who wanted to whisk her off to the States. Looking back on her early writing, Barbara realises many of her strong women were based on herself.
“When AWOS was first published, women were portrayed as either prostitutes or madonnas,” she says.“That’s why I chose to write about a real woman.”
So would she have enjoyed quite so much success without Bob?
“Perhaps not. He wore the pants, he ruled the roost, he was very manly and masculine. He gave me the space to write. When I was writing he’d often come along and knock and say, ‘Close your shop, it’s 7pm’.”
Plans were revealed this week for a prequel to A Woman Of Substance, set five years earlier and focusing on Emma’s companion, Blackie O’Neill.
She describes the idea as a “gift from Bob” because the novel, Blackie and Emma, was conceived when he was in the hospital and she was looking for a project that would involve less intensive research.
“I was worried the research would be hard after Bob’s death,” she admits.
“Then I suddenly thought: Blackie O’Neill. We never know much about him. He’s always in the first book but we never know what his private life is.”
Barbara laughs: “So I re-read all seven Emma books and I didn’t remember writing half of them. I wondered, ‘Why do I always worry about my books? They’re fabulous’. I know they work because I’m a best-selling author but…”
She hasn’t written a word of the prequel yet – but is busy plotting it in her head – and laughs off any thoughts of retirement with a “what would I do?”
While she remains a supporter of the #MeToo campaign against sexual abuse and harassment and applauds the bravery of the early accusers of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, she worries that the campaign has gone too far.
“Weinstein was a very powerful man if vulgar and also somewhat demented to do what he did,” she says.
“It’s a play of power against somebody who can’t defend themselves because you can’t always kick a man in the balls which is what I would do if someone tried it on me.
“I do think #MeToo seems to have gone a bit too far. I know many decent men who are single or widowed who are now afraid to be alone with a woman.
“Any woman can accuse a man of anything and you’re immediately ruined. I don’t know what the answer is.”
She adds quietly: “Men don’t like to be alone with women any more.”
Stridently patriotic, she insists on using her British passport when travelling to the UK despite having US citizenship. Though she doesn’t have a vote, she is supportive of Boris Johnson and Brexit.
She says: “I get all the British papers every day and I can’t bear Mr Corbyn. I think they should go somewhere and find that grave they dug him out of… and put him back in.”
On Brexit she says: “We’re a sovereign nation, we have a monarch, we have houses of Parliament, we have representatives of all the constituencies, so why does Brussels overrule the decisions of Great Britain?
“We are a great nation, we ruled the world in Victorian times, and we can be a great nation again if we get this right. The EU really don’t want us to leave because of all those billions we give them!”
She is a staunch supporter of the military and incensed at the historic prosecution of British troops who served abroad.
“The witch hunt against soldiers is going to ruin the country. I’m infuriated the way veterans are treated, they have gone to defend Queen and country and then they get sued,” she says.
Her guilty reading pleasures are thrillers by the likes of Jack Reacher creator Lee Child and US writer Daniel Silva. “I always want the bad guys to get their just desserts,” she confides.
In The Lion’s Den by Barbara Taylor Bradford (HarperCollins, £16.99) is published on November 28. For free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310, or send a cheque/PO payable to Express Bookshop: BTB Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4WJ or visit expressbookshop.co.uk. A Woman of Substance (40th anniversary edition) is also available at £8.99.
