On the greatness, and kindness, of Jilly Cooper

A writer who nobody had a bad word to say about

I was surprisingly upset to hear of the death of Jilly Cooper earlier this week, who has deservedly been memorialised in every paper and magazine in the country. Here’s an edited version of a few thoughts I came up with for The Spectator.

There are not many authors whose deaths prompt a heartfelt and very personal tribute from the king and queen, but the unexpected and sudden death of Dame Jilly Cooper from a fall aged 88 prompted Queen Camilla to mourn that “she was a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many” and observed, rightly, that “very 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.” Camilla – paying homage from one queen to another – concluded with the wish that “may her hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs.”

It is hard to think of any other romantic novelist getting such a salute, but then Cooper was peerless. She may have been Britain’s pre-eminent writer of modern-day bodice rippers, aka “queen of the bonkbuster”, but she was also so much more. It is testament to her vast popularity that many of her millions of readers felt that they knew her intimately, and those lucky enough to meet her – more of which anon – were invariably charmed by her good humour, self-deprecating wit and sheer personal charm.

Cooper was often, understandably but unfairly, lumped alongside the likes of Barbara Cartland, Jackie Collins and the more chaste Maeve Binchy, but there were two fundamental differences between Cooper and her peers. Firstly, she was as much a social satirist as she was a chronicler of dropped trousers and knickers, poking fun at a very British sub-section of landed middle class and aristocratic mores in her best-known titles such as Riders and Polo, all of which form part of the eleven-volume Rutshire Chronicles. It is a measure of Cooper’s ability to combine impressive literary allusion – although she herself would surely have pooh-poohed any idea that she was to be regarded as a Great Author amongst these writers – with decidedly lowbrow humour that the titles of many of these books were single words such as Mount!, Tackle! and, naturally, Wicked! And secondly, she could write; she was an excellent prose stylist with an innate ability to spin a cracking yarn, which did with aplomb.

Although Cooper wrote dozens of books, including straightforward romantic novels, children’s adventures and non-fiction works about anything from sport and dogs to class – of which her 1979 volume Class: A View from Middle England is something of a minor classic in its field – she will always best be regarded as the author of the Rutshire novels, and, in this particular sphere, the creator of the cad with a soft centre, Rupert Campbell-Black. When he first lolloped into her pages in 1985’s Riders, Cooper portrayed him as a priapic but fundamentally empty hedonist, but over his repeated appearances in her books, she gave him more interesting and likeable quantities, not least his sincere love for his eventual wife Taggie Campbell-Black who makes him, if not quite an honest man, certainly a better one.

It was said that when Samuel Richardson’s Pamela Andrews finally persuaded her wicked employer Mr B. to make an honest woman of her, the nation’s church bells rang out in celebration. And so it could be said of Cooper’s Campbell-Black, who is, like so many of her characters, a well-drawn archetype but also a recognisable figure. Even today, if you’re a habitué of The Bull in Charlbury or the Badminton horse trials, you will see a dozen Ruperts, sidling up to far younger women with a lascivious glint in their eyes and the promise of, if not lasting love and romance, at least a cracking night in the sack. It was also to Cooper’s credit that she refused to apologise for the un-PC aspects of her novels which the thought police have made repeated attacks on. When it was revealed that none other than the former PM Rishi Sunak was a fan of her writing, those mealy-mouthed moral arbiters were thoroughly silenced.

Cooper herself was every bit as charming, warm and decent in person as you might have imagined from her writing. I only met her once, at the Hatchards authors’ evening in 2016. I was promoting my then-recent book Byron’s Women, and Cooper was shopping the latest in the Rutshire books, Mount! In truth, she did not need a book to promote to be lionised by the dozens of admirers who were queuing for her signature, but she was kind enough to take notice of me on an adjacent table, without so many admirers, and to buy one of the few copies of Byron’s Women that sold that night. This would have been quite the accolade, but a few months later I received a long, thoughtful hand-written letter about the book, noting her own thoughts on the Byronic figure and how he had inspired her characters.

I still treasure that letter – one of the most perceptive and welcome commentaries on anything I’ve written – and, when the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals, starring a peerless Katherine Parkinson as a Cooper-esque romance novelist, aired last year, I meant to write to her again to congratulate her on what a thoroughly successful version of her book it was. Life intervened, the letter was unwritten, and now I will never have a chance to tell the great Jilly Cooper how beloved she was by me, and millions of others. My hope, however, is that she knew that anyway, and her legacy will be one of joy, laughter and – one hopes – just a little licentiousness, too.