Jilly Cooper

Jilly Cooper is a journalist, writer and media superstar. The author of many No.1 bestselling novels, she lives in Gloucestershire.

She was appointed OBE in 2004 for services to literature, and in 2009 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Gloucestershire for her contribution to literature and services to the County.

Her writing career began in 1956 when she got a job as a cub reporter on the Middlesex Independent. She then moved to public relations and was sacked from 22 jobs before ending up in book publishing.

Her first book, How To Stay Married, was written in 1969. Since then she has written or helped to compile 41 other books. She has appeared on radio and television, including What’s My Line which regularly achieved 14 million viewers. In 1970 she also wrote a TV series about four girls in a flat entitled It’s Awfully Bad For Your Eyes Darling, in which Joanna Lumley played a starring role. Jilly’s non fiction includes a book completed for Heinemann and The Imperial War Museum called Animals In War, a book about her London life called The Common Years, a collection of newspaper pieces mostly about her life in Gloucestershire called Turn Right at the Spotted Dog, and two more humorous best-sellers, How to Survive Christmas and How to Survive from 9 to 5. She is also the author of four children’s books about Little Mabel (a mongrel) and a book about mongrels called Mongrel Magic. Her most famous non-fiction work, however, is Class which has gone into many editions.

In 1975 Jilly Cooper began to write a series of “permissive” romances based on long magazine stories she had published earlier and these became Emily, Bella, Imogen, Prudence, Harriet and Octavia and a collection of short stories called Lisa & Co – her first fiction in book form. In 1993 she published Araminta’s Wedding, a witty novella of English country life inspired by the paintings of Sue McCarney-Snape.

Her first big novel, Riders was published in 1985 and went straight to number one in the bestseller lists, as did Rivals published in 1988. Polo, which was published in 1991, was the highest selling hardback novel of the year. The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, which was published in April of 1993 went straight into the number one position too and remained there for eight weeks. All of these books have sold well over 1 million copies each in their UK editions.

Riders was her first novel to be adapted for a major two part mini-series for television. It achieved an astounding 9 million viewers for the first episode and 15 million for the second. In March 1997 The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous was shown on ITV to similar audiences.