24 Facts About Jilly Cooper

Dame Jilly Cooper, was born on Jill Sallitt; 21 February 1937 and is an English author.

Jilly Cooper began her career as a journalist and wrote numerous works of non-fiction before writing several romance novels, the first of which appeared in 1975.

Jilly Cooper grew up in Ilkley and Surrey, and was educated at the Moorfield School in Ilkley and Godolphin School in Salisbury.

Jilly Cooper worked for the paper from 1957 to 1959.

Jilly Cooper's break came with a chance meeting at a dinner party.

Jilly Cooper has been called "the queen of the bonkbuster", a British term similar to bodice-ripper.

Jilly Cooper has described the research she undertakes for each novel as "like studying for an A-level".

In 1975, Jilly Cooper published her first work of romantic fiction, Emily.

In October 1993, seven years after Private Eye had pointed out the similarities, Jilly Cooper admitted that sections of Emily and Bella were plagiarised from The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy, but said that it was not deliberate.

One character was modelled on George Humphreys, a Welshman with whom Jilly Cooper had an affair in the late 1950s.

The Times noted that Jilly Cooper avoids the traditional romantic convention in which the heroine remains a virgin until the last page.

The first version of Riders was written by 1970, but shortly after Jilly Cooper had finished it, she took it with her into the West End of London and left the manuscript on a bus.

Jilly Cooper was, she says, "devastated", and it took her more than a decade to start it again.

Jilly Cooper wrote a series of children's books featuring the heroine Little Mabel.

Jilly Cooper was a passenger in one of the derailed carriages in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash of 1999, in which 31 people died, and crawled through a window to escape.

Jilly Cooper later spoke of feeling that her "number was up" and of being absurdly concerned, due to shock, about a manuscript she had been carrying.

Jilly Cooper died on 29 November 2013, at the age of 79.

Jilly Cooper has stated that she is a football fan, and supported Leeds United when she lived in Yorkshire.

In 2018, Jilly Cooper said that because of the Me Too movement, young men and women no longer feel free to flirt with one another, and that she enjoys being the subject of wolf whistles.

Jilly Cooper is an animal lover and has owned many dogs, in particular, retired greyhounds including Feather and Bluebell.

Jilly Cooper was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2004 Birthday Honours for services to literature, Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to literature and charity, and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to literature and charity.

Jilly Cooper is Honorary Doctor of Letters at Anglia Ruskin University.

In 1971, Jilly Cooper created the comedy series It's Awfully Bad for Your Eyes, Darling, which featured Joanna Lumley, and ran for one series.

Television adaptations of Jilly Cooper's novels were produced for ITV and Disney+.