Final chapter in ‘a wonderful romance’ for queen of the blockbuster

She has sold over 88 million books since the publication of her first blockbuster, A Woman Of Substance, 40 years ago.

But I can disclose that Barbara Taylor Bradford has reached a heartbreaking chapter in her own life: the death of her husband, Bob Bradford (below), whom she met on a blind date in 1961. It was love at first sight and she went on to dedicate every one of her books to him.

‘She is devastated,’ her friend and former literary agent Jonathan Lloyd tells me. ‘They were together for 57 years and married for 55. he was the rock of her life. Theirs was a wonderful love story. he was her business manager and, as a film producer, made nine mini-series and movies of the week based on her books with such stars as Deborah Kerr, Sir Anthony hopkins and Jenny Seagrove.

‘When Bob went into hospital in New York, Barbara made them make up a camp bed in his room so that she would be by his side when he finally died,’ adds Lloyd. ‘he did, peacefully, holding her hand.’

Bob died at 3.15am yesterday morning a week after he was admitted to the hospital following a stroke.

Another friend, former newspaper editor eve Pollard, recalls how Bob helped Barbara, now 86, keep to her schedule, beginning each day at 5am.

‘he made everything round her work,’ she tells me. ‘he understood about deadlines; he understood that she would get up very early in the morning and write all day. he was debonair — a continental man of a certain age.’

Bob, who was Jewish and born in Berlin, led a life even more remarkable than that of Barbara, who left school in Yorkshire at 15 but learned, years later, that her mother Freda was the illegitimate daughter of the 2nd Marquess of Ripon. ‘Bob was older than people realised,’ explains Lloyd. ‘Barbara told me two nights ago that he was 92.’

After his father’s death in the Thirties, Bob was smuggled out of Nazi Germany aged eight, to live with a relative in the South of France. his mother escaped to New York — but died three weeks before he arrived there after the war.

he met Barbara on a rare visit to London. In the early years of thei r marriage, Barbara suffered two miscarriages — but this only made the bond between them stronger. ‘ I’d take a bullet for Bob because I love him more than I love myself,’ Barbara reflected three years ago. Bob, for his part, said simply: ‘ She’s everything.’

SInGER and entertainer Leo Sayer, 71, who divorced his wife Janice in 1985 and separated from partner Donatella Piccinetti in 2007, says he has no regrets about not having a family. ‘I don’t regret not having children,’ he says. ‘I travel so much —and to be honest, still don’t feel responsible enough to have had a child. I wanted a family when I was married in the Sixties and Seventies, but my then wife Janice said — very sensibly — that our lifestyles simply didn’t suit having children. I don’t even have a pet because I’m away from home so much.’