‘In person she was a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many – and it was a particular pleasure to see her just a few weeks ago at my Queen’s Reading Room Festival where she was, as ever, a star of the show. I join my husband The King in sending our thoughts and sympathies to all her family. And may her hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs.’
It was a tribute as warm and as unpretentious as Jilly herself – a woman who put lust and laughter at the heart of her fiction, while somehow never losing her disarming modesty or mischief.
From Copywriter to Chronicler of Country Passions
Born in 1937, Jilly Cooper began her career not on the bestseller lists but in the ad world, writing copy for The Sunday Times Magazine before becoming one of Fleet Street’s most charmingly irreverent columnists. Her early non-fiction books – How to Stay Married, How to Survive from Nine to Five and Class: A View from Middle England – showcased her deftness at skewering British manners and puncturing pretension with what would become her signature wink.
She seemed to have an innate understanding of people – their vanities, vulnerabilities and peccadilloes – and could, and frequently did, turn all three into comedy gold with heart.
The Rutshire Chronicles: A New Literary Species Is Born
Then came Riders (1985), the novel that transformed her from society columnist to superstar. It was bold, sexy, uproarious – the literary equivalent of champagne on an empty stomach. In Rupert Campbell-Black, she created a character as irresistible as he was reprehensible, the rakish aristocrat whose tangled love affairs and equestrian escapades would anchor what became The Rutshire Chronicles.
Over the next four decades, those novels – Rivals, Polo, The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, Appassionata, Score!, Wicked!, Jump! and, most recently, Tackle! – sold in their millions and became shorthand for a genre all her own: the bonkbuster. But to reduce Cooper’s work to its sex scenes (however gleefully rendered) is to miss her larger genius. Beneath the romp lay satire, kindness, and a deep affection for humanity – in all its absurdity.
The Dogs & The Damehood
Her home life in Gloucestershire with her husband, Leo, and their beloved dogs was as much part of her legend as her novels. Her devotion to animals found voice in Intelligent and Loyal, her affectionate love letter to mongrels. She once said her dogs were her ‘moral compass,’ and few who met her doubted it.
In 2004 she was awarded an OBE, in 2018 a CBE, and last year, fittingly, she became Dame Jilly Cooper for her services to literature and charity – though friends joked she’d been ‘Her Ladyship of Rutshire’ for decades already.
Jilly on Film, YouTube and the Sofa
Those who met her on screen found her every bit as effervescent as her prose. Whether chatting with Gloria Hunniford about interrogating the police on male anatomy, talking on the BBC about sex and class, or delighting in the Disney+ revival of Rivals, she radiated mischief and generosity. And the abiding refrain throughout was always her unmistakable, conspiratorial giggle, which will be, now, be forever missed.
If you dip into YouTube, you’ll find her in numerous interviews: candid, kind, just a little wicked.
A Legacy Of Laughter & Lust
What made Jilly Cooper so beloved wasn’t just the escapism of the worlds she created, but the kindness that infused them. Her women are spirited, her men flawed, her villains rarely beyond redemption. As we raise a glass to her extraordinary life, one suspects she’d want the final word to be joyous rather than solemn. So, here’s to Jilly: to galloping hearts, to gossip, to glory, and to the unapologetic pleasure of a life – and a genre – lived entirely on her own terms.
To shop the full collection, visit Bookshop.org.
