Sue Leonard: Jilly Cooper charted the excesses of Thatcher's 1980s

Although the author's 'bonkbusters' were sneered at by critics, her fun and empathy opened up conversations around sex and influenced a generation, writes Sue Leonard

Jilly Cooper was ahead of her time in her witty weekly columns. File picture: Billy Higgins

News of writer Jilly Cooper’s sudden death after a fall earlier this week came as a terrible shock. At 88, still effervescent, she’d had a pretty good year. 

2024 saw her made a Dame of the British Empire, as well as the release of the hugely successful adaptation of her second bonkbuster, Rivals, on Disney Plus. And it was only a year before that – in November 2023 — that her 11th and final bonkbuster, Tackle, was released. Her work ethic remained astonishing.

I was 18 when Jilly burst onto the scene with her witty weekly columns in The Sunday Times. At home, we’d fight to read her words — nobody else was penning such personal, let alone funny content at the time. It was something totally new.

And when, as a student nurse, I shared a flat in London’s Great Portland Street, we loved reading her accounts of flatland life; we, too, existed on scrambled eggs and coffee — had endless guests — in our case students from Trinity Dublin, who would sleep on the floor, or grab a bed from someone who was on night-duty. 

And we lived in happy squalor. In our bathroom, too, "talcum powder and dust lay crisp and even on the pipes and the linoleum". But it was when I married, at 20, and lived in South London, juggling my job in South Molton Street with hosting over-ambitious dinner parties, that her words really came into their own. 

Laughing at her accounts of domestic disasters, made me feel less inadequate and alone. I cheered at her pronouncement that dull women have clean houses.

Wildly entertaining, the columns had poignant moments too. Jilly wrote about being a second wife; about the pain of childlessness ending in the adoption of her adored Emily and Felix. In this openness, she was ahead of her time.

Her book of 1969, How to Stay Married, became my bible — though reading it today shows that we lived in a vastly different world. Writing a foreword to the reissue in 2011, the author was horrified to re-read her advice that men hated seeing women slaving in the house; and that, they should arrange to work from 8.30 until 4.30, so that they could clean and cook before their husbands arrived home.

She also said that if a woman refused her husband sex more than two days in a row, she has only herself to blame if he is unfaithful. Unimaginably sexist in today’s world — when consent has come to the fore. Yet back then, I was firmly on her page. 

I, too, had been brought up in a boarding school, leaving with the belief that the man as the main provider, should be catered to. And refusing sex, in those heady days, simply didn’t cross my mind.

I was a mother in 1975 when Jilly published Emily, the first of her six romance novels. Funny and sweet, and so much more identifiable than anything else on the market, I’d read them whenever life with my small children felt too much. 

I was trying to write back then — and my ambition was to follow in Jilly’s footsteps, but I soon discovered the apparent simplicity of her writing hid a fierce intelligence, talent, wit, and empathetic knowledge of all she wrote about.

By the time we moved to Hampshire and had three more children, Jilly had progressed to her doorstopper bonkbusters — starting with Riders and Rivals. Those quickly became bibles for a generation of teenagers. 

And how much better to learn of sex through her raunchy romps, than by looking for the ‘dirty bits,’ in Lawrences’ Lady Chatterley’s Lover, as we had. So much more fun, too, than learning from the earnest tone of the sex and shopping blockbusters by Jackie Collins that had preceded Riders.

It would be wrong to dismiss her books as all froth. Taking scenes from her own life, as well as doing some diligent research, Jilly was reflecting society as a whole. Hampshire wasn’t quite Rutshire — we hadn’t royalty on the doorstep — but those books reflected the excesses of Thatcher’s England.

The 1980s was a time of greed when money ruled. It saw the rise of ever more extravagant parties. And as the decade progressed, the drinking, dancing and flirting my friends and I had enjoyed, had progressed from being largely fun and innocent to something darker. 

Watching Rivals last year felt strangely familiar. It brought back that time when friends, like Jilly’s characters, had strayed, leading to a clutch of messy divorces.

Jilly Cooper at the UK special screening of the new Disney+ drama 'Rivals' last year. It would be wrong to dismiss her books as all froth.

Jilly’s heart, though, was in the right place. The infamous Rupert Campbell-Black might have started out as an anti-hero, sleeping his way around Rutshire with abandon, but when he falls for the gentle Taggie in Rivals, he comes to heal – showing that he has a sense of honour.

And that, in Cooperland, is what matters most. Adultery, and overindulgence in everything is always forgiven; its bitchiness, and political correctness that make a villain. 

Like her best heroes, Jilly was highly honourable. She was loyal, too, and showed dignity throughout the media frenzy that ensued when her beloved husband, Leo, was caught after a long-standing affair. She forgave him; and stayed married, throughout his diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease, and until his death.

I first met Jilly in 2006. At 69, she oozed charm; but her effusiveness, combined with her curiosity about everyone and everything, made her a frustrating interviewee. When I asked if she enjoyed writing, she turned the question on me. 

And when we discussed a particularly toxic female character, she said: "I’m sure you know women like that – being as you are and having a career. I bet you are the victim of the odd bitchy woman." 

Jilly Cooper in Dublin in 2010. Like her best heroes, Jilly was highly honourable. File picture: Billy Higgins

It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that Jilly was obliquely referring to herself, and it’s clear that in spite of, or perhaps because of her great success, critics and some readers, still loved to sneer. "People say, 'oh, we couldn’t have Jilly at a book club,’" she told me, before mentioning a particularly scathing Guardian review.

Jilly was famously mad about animals. Brought up in the country with ponies and dogs, she portrays hunt saboteurs as the enemy. Yet she’s passionate about animal welfare. 

When I mentioned her grandchildren, expecting to see a photo, she muttered that she wasn’t great with babies, and instead produced a photo of Feather, the Rescue Greyhound found wandering on Dublin streets.

Meeting in 2010, she dedicated Jump to Rufus, my late black labrador, saying that labradors are next to God. But then she loves men too — and flirted happily with a young waiter, and then with Billy, the photographer. Leaving that day, I told her she was my role model. Laughing, she quipped: "Your roll in the hay model." 

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Does she know how she’s influenced a generation? How she’s opened conversations on sex, marriage, and class, and led a whole society in portraying a sense of decency, loyalty and sheer niceness? She was delighted when, in 2016, she won the Bord Gáis Energy International Recognition Award. That, sadly, was the last time we met.

I asked her once, what she’d like to be remembered for. Her answer? “For cheering people up.”

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