Women emerging from humble beginnings to achieve great things was a constant theme in Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novels, echoing her own rise to sparkling literary success, and in 2009 I was honoured to become her real ‘woman of substance’ when she marked her famous book’s 30th anniversary with the Woman Of Substance award.

The award aimed to highlight the strength of women who come through adversity.

Taylor Bradford gave it to me after I was blinded and very badly injured when my car was in a head-on collision with a lorry a year before my newborn son died in my arms.

Lisa Salmon with Barbara Taylor Bradford and Sarah, Duchess of York during the awards ceremony
Lisa Salmon with Barbara Taylor Bradford and Sarah, Duchess of York during the awards ceremony (PA)

As she presented the award at a glittering ceremony at London’s Dorchester Hotel, Taylor Bradford said: “Lisa’s story is amazing.

“She has had to deal with not one but a series of tragedies which has caused her great physical and emotional pain, had to find the strength to carry on and has overcome great adversity to reinvent herself and live her life to the full.”

I think at least part of the reason BTB, as everyone called her, chose me as the winner was 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.

I met her a few times and was struck by her elegance, poise, and steely determination – it was absolutely clear that BTB was a woman who understood what it took to succeed in life.

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 had won the award, it was Barbara Taylor Bradford herself who was the true Woman Of Substance.

– Lisa Salmon, the first winner of the Barbara Taylor Bradford Woman Of Substance award, is family editor at the PA news agency.