Dame Jilly Cooper, the irrepressible “queen of the bonkbuster” behind Riders and Rivals, has died aged 88 following a sudden fall on Sunday morning, her devastated family confirmed. In a statement, her children Felix and Emily said their mother was “the shining light in all of our lives,” adding: “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.”
The author had been out in public only recently; This Morning’s Gyles Brandreth said she was in “really good form” when he saw her at the Queen’s Reading Room Festival at Chatsworth two weeks ago. A private family funeral will be held in line with her wishes, with a larger service of thanksgiving planned at Southwark Cathedral in the coming months.
Cooper’s agent Felicity Blunt called working with her “the privilege of my career,” saying Jilly’s Rutshire Chronicles — and their dashing, havoc-wreaking show-jumping star Rupert Campbell-Black — “defined culture, writing and conversation for more than fifty years.” Blunt added: “You wouldn’t expect books categorised as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time, but Jilly wrote with acuity about class, sex, marriage, rivalry, grief and fertility… She wrote, she said, simply ‘to add to the sum of human happiness’.” In recent years, Cooper served as an executive producer on Disney+’s re-imagining of Rivals, with David Tennant, Emily Atack and Danny Dyer among the cast.
A beloved read for generations — including Queen Camilla — Cooper often drew on her own life. She survived the 1999 Ladbroke Grove rail disaster (“I saw this bright orange flash and thought this is it, my number has come up”), and later revealed she’d suffered a stroke in 2010. That same year, she spoke candidly about caring for her husband, the publisher Leo Cooper, after his Parkinson’s diagnosis: “I actually love the writing process… but the fact is that Leo isn’t very well and his round-the-clock care bills are horrific… I’ve got to keep on writing but it’s not a problem because I love doing it.”
Her marriage to Leo, whom she’d known since childhood, lasted 52 years until his death in 2013. They adopted two children and weathered a public scandal after Leo’s affair, eventually moving from London to Gloucestershire to start afresh. Reflecting on love, she once said: “Trust in the unexpected… If I’d known I was going to be married to a wonderful man for 52 years, I’d have stopped worrying.”
Tributes have flooded in. Kirstie Allsopp wrote: “A British institution, funny, enthusiastic and self-deprecating… Bless you Dame Jilly, Rest in Peace.” Queen Camilla paid a warm, wry tribute to her friend, saying very few writers become legends in their own lifetimes and signing off with a quintessential Cooper flourish: “May her hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs.”
