Queen leads tributes to 'wonderfully witty friend' Dame Jilly Cooper

[dutchman]

Novelist Dame Jilly Cooper, known for her best-selling romps including Rivals and Riders, has died at the age of 88.

Dame Jilly's most successful works were The Rutshire Chronicles, beginning with Riders in 1985, which portrayed the scandals, sex lives and social circles of the wealthy horse-loving country set.

Follow-up Rivals was published in 1988 and reached a new generation of fans last year when it was turned into a hit Disney+ TV series. She sold more than 11 million books in total in the UK alone.

Queen Camilla led the tributes, describing Dame Jilly as a legend and a "wonderfully witty and compassionate friend", adding: "May her hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs."

The author, who lived in Gloucestershire, died on Sunday morning after a fall.

In a statement, her children Felix and Emily 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."

In her statement, the Queen said she was "so saddened" to learn of Dame Jilly's death.

"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," she said.

Dame Jilly was, "as ever, a star of the show" at the Queen's Reading Room Festival just three weeks ago, she said.

She added: "I join my husband The King in sending our thoughts and sympathies to all her family."

Dame Jilly's agent Felicity Blunt remembered the writer as "emotionally intelligent, fantastically generous, sharply observant and utter fun".

Blunt added: "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."

Dame Jilly started her career as a journalist before publishing her first book - a guide called How To Stay Married - in 1969.

She remained married to husband Leo from 1961 until his death in 2013.

Her writing career took off with further astute and humorous non-fiction guides to men, women and the class system, alongside a series of romance novels.

She combined all of her favourite subjects to create the heady formula for The Rutshire Chronicles, which ran to 11 novels in total. She returned to the series for a final instalment, Tackle, in 2023.

Cooper's funeral will be a private family occasion, her agent says.

But a public service of thanksgiving will be held at Southwark Cathedral in London at some point in the next few months.

An announcement on the arrangements for that will be made in due course.