Barbara Taylor Bradford had ‘elegance, poise and steely determination’

The journalist who Barbara Taylor Bradford named as the first Woman of Substance has hailed the late author as someone with “elegance, poise, and steely determination”.

The awards were launched to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Taylor Bradford’s debut novel, A Woman of Substance, which was first published in 1979, about a servant that ended up heading up a business empire.

In 2009, Lisa Salmon, from Leeds, was recognised as the first woman to get the prize after she overcame adversity following a car crash with a lorry in 2001, which left her virtually blind.

A year later her newborn son died in her arms.

Taylor Bradford died aged 91 on Sunday following a short illness, “and was surrounded by loved ones to the very end”, a spokeswoman said.

Ms Salmon said: “I think at least part of the reason BTB, as everyone called her, chose me to win the award is because she was from Leeds, which is where I live, and she too was a journalist before she started writing novels, so there were definite similarities in our early lives.

“But despite having lost her Yorkshire accent after living in the US for so many years, she still retained her own Yorkshire warmth, and I was definitely left with the impression that although I’d won the award, it was Barbara Taylor Bradford herself who was the true Woman of Substance.”

Ms Salmon, a family editor and a senior health, homes and reactive feature writer for the PA news agency, said she was “honoured” to receive the prize.

At the ceremony in London’s Dorchester Hotel more than 10 years ago, Taylor Bradford said: “Lisa’s story is amazing.

Ms Salmon also had rheumatoid arthritis as a toddler, her father died when she was just a child and she discovered she had a potentially fatal blood clot in her leg during a holiday.

She regained some of the sight in one eye after a cataract operation, and has supported the Yorkshire Air Ambulance service that saved her life after the collision near Skipton.