{"id":39709,"date":"2025-10-07T13:25:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T13:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/i-called-jilly-coopers-novel-the-best-book-ever-ill-never-her-reply-celebrity-news-showbiz-tv\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T13:25:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T13:25:00","slug":"i-called-jilly-coopers-novel-the-best-book-ever-ill-never-her-reply-celebrity-news-showbiz-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/i-called-jilly-coopers-novel-the-best-book-ever-ill-never-her-reply-celebrity-news-showbiz-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"I called Jilly Cooper’s novel the best book ever, I’ll never her reply | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"Jilly<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Jilly Cooper in her beloved garden at home near Stroud, Gloucestershire (Image: Adrian Sherratt Photography Ltd \/ Shutterstock)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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One of my most treasured mementoes is a sheet of pale blue notepaper with a delightful message pecked out on a typewriter \u2013 a note from my literary heroine Jilly Cooper thanking me for citing her 1985 novel Riders as my favourite book in a newspaper. Her appreciation was genuine, effusive and warm, sending me into a puddle of delight \u2013 Jilly Cooper, thanking me? \u2013 and in proper etiquette, she didn\u2019t stop there, but went on to reveal: \u201cI see you write Holby City \u2013 it\u2019s one of my favourite programmes.\u201d<\/p>\n

She never missed it, she wrote, unless she was out, because she didn\u2019t \u201cknow how to work the machine\u201d. Lovely Jilly, eschewing word processors and befuddled by VCRs, living in her own delightful world of dogs and champagne, is no longer with us \u2013 having died suddenly on Sunday at the age of 88 following a fall.<\/p>\n

No wonder there was universal sadness yesterday as fans and friends paid fulsome tribute to the queen of the bonkbuster whose book Riders, written when she was nearly 50, the first of her \u2018Rutshire Chronicles\u2019, introduced readers to the naughty polo-playing set \u2013 including the dastardly, devilishly handsome Rupert Campbell-Black.<\/p>\n

The Daily Express at the time suggested it offered \u201cno jaded cami-knicker trimmings\u201d \u2013 just \u201cstraight lust\u201d \u2013 though still managing to extol the virtues of true love.<\/p>\n

Her children, Felix and Emily, said her death had come as a \u201ccomplete shock\u201d. “Mum was the shining light in all of our lives. Her love for all of her family and friends knew no bounds. Her unexpected death has come as a complete shock,\u201d they said in a statement. \u201cWe are so proud of everything she achieved in her life and can\u2019t begin to imagine life without her infectious smile and laughter all around us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Queen Camilla, whose first husband Andrew Parker Bowles was said to have been the inspiration for Campbell-Black, hailed the author as a \u201cwonderfully witty and compassionate friend\u201d. \u201cVery few writers get to be a legend in their own lifetime but Jilly was one, creating a whole new genre of literature and making it her own through a career that spanned over five decades,\u201d said the Queen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Jilly<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Pictured at home in Putney, in December 1978 when she was a star newspaper columnist (Image: Getty)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Read more:<\/strong> Top 7 Jilly Cooper books ranked as she dies at 88 \u2013 No.1 is a total classic <\/a><\/p>\n

Read more:<\/strong> Rivals cast pay tribute to ‘our queen’ Jilly Cooper as author dies aged 88 <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Jilly<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Jilly with her pet cat in February 1975 (Image: Getty)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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\u201cIn person she was a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many \u2013 and it was a particular pleasure to see her just a few weeks ago at my Queen\u2019s Reading Room Festival where she was, as ever, a star of the show.\u201d The Queen added: “” 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.”<\/p>\n

Fellow author Gyles Brandreth called Jilly, \u201csimply adorable. Brilliant, beautiful, funny (so funny), sexy (so sexy!), the best company, the most generous and thoughtful and kind-hearted friend\u201d. While her agent, Felicity Blunt, said: \u201cJilly will undoubtedly be best remembered for her chart-topping series The Rutshire Chronicles and its havoc-making and handsome show-jumping hero Rupert Campbell-Black.<\/p>\n

You wouldn\u2019t expect books categorised as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time but Jilly wrote with acuity and insight about all things \u2013 class, sex, marriage, rivalry, grief and fertility.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, she published the 11th in the series, Tackle!, two years ago and last year Rivals, the second in her Rutshire Chronicles series, was successfully adapted for streaming giant Disney Plus starring David Tennant, Aidan Turner, Victoria Smurfit and Danny Dyer, winning her a new generation of fans.<\/p>\n

Jilly\u2019s stamp on the project was evident, for she was an executive producer, and it is authentically delightful. How proud she must have been to see what is commonly accepted to be the best of her books on the small screen.<\/p>\n

There is not a writer of commercial women\u2019s fiction I know who wouldn\u2019t uphold Dame Jilly \u2013 after being appointed OBE in 2004 and CBE in 2018, she received a damehood in 2024 for services to literature and charity \u2013 as the GOAT, with her larger than life characters, luscious descriptions, labyrinthine plots and the naughtiest of sex scenes.<\/p>\n

Between Jilly and Jackie Collins, women of a certain age got their sex education from between their pages, introduced to impossibly randy heroes with insatiable appetites who would show you an unforgettable time between the sheets. Silk, probably. But to reduce Jilly to her sex scenes is to underestimate her literary prowess. Anyone who dismisses her work as fluff hasn\u2019t read it. Her command of her material, her language, her characters, are second to none.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Riders<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Riders, Cooper’s 1985 novel that made her really famous, and its famously saucy cover (Image: Transworld)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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\"Jilly<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Jilly and her military history publisher husband, Leo (Image: Nikki English \/ Mail On Sunday \/ Shutterstock)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Jilly Sallitt was born in Hornchurch, Essex, in February 1937, the daughter of a soldier, Brigadier WB Sallitt. However, she grew up in the Dales, in Ilkley, where the local pony club loomed large. She was educated at the Godolphin School in Salisbury, after which she learnt to type in Oxford, getting her first job aged 20 as a reporter on the Middlesex Independent in Brentford. She married military publisher Leo Cooper in 1961, and later they adopted a son and a daughter.<\/p>\n

She found fame aged 32 when The Sunday Times published an article about her home life called \u201cThe Young Wife\u2019s Tale\u201d in 1969. It was funny, frank and groundbreaking. The editor, Harry Evans, gave her a column and she was off at a gallop.<\/p>\n

For the next 13 years she wrote about the life of a young married woman in London. She knew she had arrived when Private Eye nick-named her Jolly Sooper. But more was to come. She had already written six fairly racy novels about the sex lives of entitled young women when she published Riders.<\/p>\n

I was 22 and Riders was a thick, chunky doorstop of a book with the most bodacious cover: a perfect bottom clad in the tightest pair of jodhpurs, a man\u2019s hand caressing the right cheek. It was bold and visceral \u2013 you could feel the heat of his fingers \u2013 and pure Jilly: sexy, witty, English, classy and just a little bit (ok, very!) naughty. What emerged from between the covers was bold and barrier-breaking and hugely successful.<\/p>\n

The family had moved to a 13th-century Cotswolds house called The Chantry, Jilly writing in a gazebo in the grounds. She also began work with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, of which she was the Mid-Gloucestershire president. When it clashed with her membership of the Cotswold Hunt, she stayed with the hunt.<\/p>\n

She owned the Cotswolds before Soho Farmhouse was even a twinkle in Nick Jones\u2019 eye. With its gingerbread cottages and sprawling, mellow manor houses, her books are house porn at its finest. (Rutshire isn\u2019t on Right Move. I know. I\u2019ve looked).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Veronica Henry got a letter from Jilly Cooper after she wrote how much she loved Riders (Image: Courtesy Veronica Henry \/ Jenny Lewis)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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You are instantly propelled into the world she is creating, whether it\u2019s show-jumping, television or opera, her impeccable research lightly worn but her accuracy razor sharp in every detail. You fall hard and fast for her heroes, whether it\u2019s Campbell-Black or arrogant maestro Rannaldini, swept along by the lusciousness of her prose, her superlative powers of description, peppered with quotes from Shakespeare or Tennyson, for she was nothing if not well-read.<\/p>\n

In 1990 it emerged that her husband Leo had enjoyed a mistress in London for eight years. The couple stayed together, but not without much pain, and she cared for her husband through a long period of growing disability, when after his retirement he fell victim to Parkinson\u2019s Disease before his death aged 79 in 2013.<\/p>\n

Now she herself is gone. But no one I venture will ever write better about the upper-classes \u2013 their homes chaotic muddles with kitchens to-die-for, a coq au vin bubbling on the Aga, always a loveable dog prowling hoping for a titbit, always something better to do than housework, which is never a priority for the blue- and hot-blooded. Meanwhile, the arrivistes, with their ghastly new money, are buttoned up and house-proud and dull \u2013 until they are unleashed.<\/p>\n

I was lucky enough to meet her more than once. As a baby script editor at Central Television, developing a drama series set in the Cotswolds about a dysfunctional brewing family, I heard that she was in the building (I like to think she was researching Rivals, which came out a year later).<\/p>\n

I sneaked into the studio and asked if she would join the writing team. With her mane of golden hair and her sparkling blue eyes, she was one of her own characters personified. She listened to me intently, asking me thoughtful questions, her voice surprisingly deep and cut-glass, her thoughts tumbling out in a rush like pearls being dropped onto a plate, her mind turning over my proposition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The recent Disney adaptation of Rivals won Jilly a new generation of fans (Image: Disney)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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She declined with such kindness and grace \u2013 \u201cI really don\u2019t think I\u2019d be awfully good at it \u2013 but I came away feeling elated at having met my hero.<\/p>\n

Jilly\u2019s friendships with the future Queen Camilla and the horsey Major Ronald Ferguson were much reported, as was her row with Princess Michael of Kent. When Cooper wrote an article about her friend that appeared under the headline \u201cThe Pushy Princess\u201d, Princess Michael sent her 30 pieces of silver in 5p coins.<\/p>\n

In 1999 she survived the Ladbroke Grove rail crash in which 31 people died. She escaped through a window from one of the derailed carriages and later spoke movingly of feeling that her \u201cnumber was up\u201d. Whenever I teach writing, and someone asks me about voice \u2013 what it is and how to capture it \u2013 I give Jilly Cooper as the perfect example.<\/p>\n

Her generous spirit, wicked sense of humour and joie de vivre shone out on every page she wrote. Her irreverence, her love of words, her sharp eye for social comedy, her ability to capture the rawest of emotions that will have you roaring with laughter one moment and reaching for the tissues the next.<\/p>\n

I shall lie in the bath tonight with Rupert and Declan and Rannaldini and Lysander and a glass of champagne \u2013 jodhpur-clad bottoms up, dear Jilly.<\/p>\n