‘Bonkbuster’ author Dame Jilly Cooper dies aged 88

Dame Jilly Cooper, the author of “bonkbusters” including Rivals, Riders and Polo, has died after a fall at the age of 88.

Her children Felix and Emily said her death on Sunday morning has come as a “complete shock”.

A statement said: “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. We are so proud of everything she achieved in her life and can’t begin to imagine life without her infectious smile and laughter all around us.”

Dame Jilly was best known for her books in The Rutshire Chronicles, featuring the showjumping lothario Rupert Campbell-Black.

One of the books, Rivals, was recently adapted for television by Disney+.

Her agent Felicity Blunt said: “The privilege of my career has been working with a woman who has defined culture, writing and conversation since she was first published over fifty years ago.

“Jilly 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.

“You wouldn’t expect books categorised as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time but Jilly wrote with acuity and insight about all things – class, sex, marriage, rivalry, grief and fertility.

“Her plots were both intricate and gutsy, spiked with sharp observations and wicked humour. She regularly mined her own life for inspiration and there was something Austenesque about her dissections of society, its many prejudices and norms. But if you tried to pay her this compliment, or any compliment, she would brush it aside.

“She wrote, she said, simply ‘to add to the sum of human happiness’. In this regard as a writer she was and remains unbeatable.

“In her last few years Jilly added to her curriculum vitae by serving as an executive producer on the Happy Prince adaptation of her novel Rivals for Disney+. Her suggestions for story and dialogue inevitably layered and enhanced scripts and her presence on set was a joy for cast and crew alike.

“Emotionally intelligent, fantastically generous, sharply observant and utter fun Jilly Cooper will be deeply missed by all at Curtis Brown and on the set of Rivals.

“I have lost a friend, an ally, a confidante and a mentor. But I know she will live forever in the words she put on the page and on the screen.”

Dame Jilly’s first novel in the Rutshire series, Riders, was published in 1985.

It made the BBC list of 100 important English language novels in the love, sex and romance selection alongside Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice.

Born in Hornchurch, Essex in 1937, Dame Jilly grew up in Yorkshire and attended the private Godolphin School in Salisbury.

Her father was a brigadier and her family moved to London in the 1950s where she became a reporter on The Middlesex Independent when she was 20.

She has said she moved to public relations and was sacked from 22 jobs before ending up in book publishing.

Her work has been adapted at various points, including an ITV series of The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous with Coronation Street star Stephen Billington and Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville, while Marcus Gilbert starred in a Riders series during the 1990s.

She won the inaugural Comedy Women in Print lifetime achievement award in 2019 and was made a dame for her services to literature and charity in 2024.

A new edition of How To Survive Christmas by  Dame Jilly is due to be published through Transworld in November.

The book, first published in 1986, is described as “an irreverent and witty guide to surviving the festive season”.

Her publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said: “Working with Jilly Cooper over the past thirty years has been one of the great privileges and joys of my publishing life.

“Beyond her genius as a novelist, she was always a personal heroine of mine for so many other reasons. For her kindness and friendship, for her humour and irrepressible enthusiasm, for her curiosity, for her courage, and for her profound love of animals.

“Jilly may have worn her influence lightly but she was a true trailblazer.

“As a journalist she went where others feared to tread and as a novelist she did likewise.

“With a winning combination of glorious storytelling, wicked social commentary and deft, lacerating characterisation, she dissected the behaviour, bad mostly, of the English upper middle classes with the sharpest of scalpels.

“It is no exaggeration to say that Riders, her first Rutshire chronicle, changed the course of popular fiction forever.

“Ribald, rollicking and the very definition of good fun, it, and the 10 Rutshire novels which followed it, were to inspire a generation of women, writers and otherwise, to tell it how it was, whilst giving us a cast of characters who would define a generation and beyond.”

He added: “A publishing world without a new Jilly Cooper novel on the horizon is a drabber, less gorgeous place and we shall mourn the loss of a ground-breaking talent and a true friend.”

Dame Jilly’s funeral will be private in line with her wishes, according to her agent.

A public service of thanksgiving will be held in the coming months in Southwark Cathedral to celebrate her life, with a separate announcement made in due course.