I first read Wuthering Heights when I was about 12 or 13 years old. It was a favourite of my mother's, and she bought me a copy.

I remember finding the novel strange, mysterious, dramatic and compelling.

Most of all, it was very touching.

As I grew older, I came to understand that it was a story of revenge, and not a great love story, as so many think it is.

I became addicted to the books of the Bronte sisters - Emily, Charlotte and Anne. Often, my mother would take me to Haworth, where the sisters grew up with their brother, Branwell, at the Haworth Parsonage. Their father was the parson. This is a museum now. My mother also took me over the wild, windswept moors to Top Withens, supposedly the site of Wuthering Heights, which is of course, the name of the house where Catherine Earnshaw lived, not a place.

I grew up in Yorkshire, and Haworth is about two hours from Leeds, the city of my birth. This book, more than any other, influenced me and my writing.

I believe Emily Bronte to be one of the great geniuses of English literature. So influenced am I by the Brontes, I invented a play called Charlotte and Her Sisters, which I used in my novel The Triumph of Katie Byrne. Katie is an actress and appears in the play, but before this happens, I ''take'' her to Haworth to visit the parsonage.

What is so extraordinary about Wuthering Heights is that Emily Bronte used two narrators to tell her story. Also, Heathcliff is the great Byronic hero. Even today, I find the book unputdownable.

Barbara Taylor Bradford is author of ''Heirs of Ravenscar'' (HarperCollins).