Queen leads tributes after best-selling novelist Dame Jilly Cooper dies aged 88 after fall
The beloved author of 'bonkbusters', Rivals and Riders, sold over 11 million copies of her books in the UK alone. Her family say her death came as a ‘complete shock’
Dame Jilly Cooper has died at the age of 88.
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The novelist passed away on Sunday morning after a fall, her agent confirmed.
Tributes have poured in for the Rivals author, who has sold over 11 million books in the UK alone.
The Queen described her as a “legend” and a “wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many”.
The Queen said in a message: “I was so saddened to learn of Dame Jilly’s death last night.
"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..
"In person she was a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many – and it was a particular pleasure to see her just a few weeks ago at my Queen’s Reading Room Festival where she was, as ever, a star of the show.
"I join my husband the King in sending our thoughts and sympathies to all her family. And may her hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs.”
The message was signed “Camilla R”.
Her passing came as a "complete shock", Dame Cooper's children Felix and Emily said.
"It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Dame Jilly Cooper, DBE who died on Sunday morning, after a fall, at the age of 88," a statement said.
Her family 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 Cooper's agent added: “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.”
She added: “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.”
Actor Rufus Jones, who stars on the hit TV drama Rivals, took to social media to pay tribute.
His statement read: "We are almost exactly halfway through filming Series 2 of Rivals, and have just heard that Dame Jilly has left us.
"What an extraordinary woman. Just last month we were all together at her famous summer garden party, still giddy at being in the realm of this fantastic person.
"Hilarious, twinkingly outrageous and kind, we loved being in her company. I remember having lunch on set with her two summers ago, and the stories poured out of her.
"An incredible one about interviewing Thatcher which- like so much of her master storytelling- was surprising, subverting and deeply human.
"My love and thoughts with Jilly’s friends and family, and the Rivals company. Back to filming a show that was always Hers, but utterly more so now."
Opening up about their last meeting, Gyles Brandreth told This Morning: “55 years on, in Derbyshire, we sat in the back of a buggy, holding hands talking about sex. All she did was bring happiness into the world.
“She just bubbled with energy enthusiasm, love and champagne, she was a shrewd cookie.
“What a wonderful life, just to give people happiness. Tragic fall, it’s heartbreaking, but at the same time she went out at the top all guns blazing.”
Best known for her series the "Rutshire Chronicles", which includes books like "Riders, Rivals, Polo, and Mount", Dame Cooper's novels have been described as romantic and racy.
Dame Jilly’s first novel in the Rutshire series, Riders, was published in 1985.
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.
The famed author once revealed she was sacked from 22 jobs before ending up in book publishing.
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 book by Dame Jilly is due to be published through Transworld in November.
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.
All of Jilly Cooper's books: Rutshire Chronicles series:
- Riders (1985)
- Rivals (1988)
- Polo (1991)
- The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous (1993)
- Appassionata (1996)
- Score! (1999)
- Pandora (2002)
- Wicked! (2006)
- Jump! (2010)
- Mount! (2016)
- Tackle! (2024)
Earlier standalone novels:
- Emily (1975)
- Bella (1976)
- Harriet (1976)
- Octavia (1977)
- Prudence (1978)
- Imogen (1978)
- Lisa & Co (1981)