Jilly Cooper was born in Hornchurch, Essex in 1937, but she comes from a well-known Yorkshire family. Her great great grandfather founded The Leeds Mercury (which eventually merged with the Yorkshire Post) and was Liberal MP for Leeds. Her maternal grandfather was Canon Heaton and went to St Peter’s York.
Her father was in the army and when she was two they moved back to Ilkley where she was mostly brought up. She went to school at Godolphin in Salisbury where she became known to the staff as “the Unholy Terror”. In the mid-fifties her family moved to London.
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 had a variety of jobs, ending up in book publishing.
In 1961 she married publisher Leo Cooper, who comes from Long Preston, whom she had first met in Yorkshire in 1948. They have two children, Felix and Emily, and various cats and dogs. They live in an old house in the Cotswold area of Gloucestershire where they moved in 1982.
Jilly had already started writing stories for women’s magazines when in 1968 she met the editor of The Sunday Times Colour Magazine at a dinner party. He invited her to write a piece for him on the difficulties of being a young working wife; as well as being typically outrageous; it was very funny and, as a result, The Sunday Times took her on as a regular columnist. Subsequently she established a remarkable following among Sunday Times readers whom she delighted regularly over thirteen and a half years with a range of memorably entertaining pieces together with a series of more serious interviews that included Mrs Thatcher, Dame Rebecca West, George Best, Jill Bennett and Sacheverill Sitwell. Her Sunday Times pieces and many others have been published in several volumes. Her pieces were regularly syndicated abroad in South Africa and Australasia. In 1982 she left The Sunday Times and joined The Mail on Sunday for whom she wrote a bi-monthly column until 1987.
Her first book, How To Stay Married, was written in 1969. Since then she has written or helped to compile 39 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 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 – 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 1 in the best sellers 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 1 position too and remained there for eight weeks. All of these books have sold well over 1 million copies each in their British 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 wa s shown on ITV to similar audiences.
In April 1996 Jilly Cooper’s twelfth novel Appasionata was published by Bantam Press. It received acres of press coverage and was a runaway best seller, going straight into the number 1 position on The Sunday Times list – it remained there until 12th May 1996.
In 1997 the corgi edition of appasionata was published and also went straight to number 1.
In 1998 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Book Awards.
Jilly Coooper’s thirteenth novel SCORE! was published in May 1999 by Bantam Press. It follows on from Appassionata with many of her best loved characters reappearing, including the irrepressible Rupert Campbell- Black and the arch villain Sir Robert Rannaldini. The paperback edition was published in March 2000 and went straight to number 1, selling over 500,000 copies to date.
Animals in War, Jilly Cooper’s much loved classic depiction of animals in wartime, was reissued in March 2000 to coincide with the launch of the Animals In War Memorial campaign. Jilly Cooper is one of the patrons of this campaign. A memorial will be unveiled in Park Lane in November 2004.
Jilly Cooper’s new novel, Pandora, was published in 2002 and was on the bestseller list for 19 weeks. It is set in the dazzling and glitzy international art world with favourite and much-loved characters such as Rupert Campbell-Black making cameo appearances.
The paperback of Pandora, published in 2004, was also a number one bestseller.
She is now working on a novel about schools.
Jilly Cooper’s books have sold over 11 million copies in the UK alone. Her books have been translated into Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Greek, Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Russian, Finnish, Hungarian and Lithuanian as well as being published in The United States.
In 2004 Jilly Cooper became a grandmother when, on January 26th Jago, Patrick was born to daughter Emily and son-in-law Adam Tarrant. In June 2004 Jilly was awarded the O.B.E for Services to Literature, and in July she received the Variety Club Heart of Yorkshire Award for Services to the Media.
Also in 2004, Tesco readers voted Riders 1st and Rivals 11th in their list of all time best beach reading ever. Rivals was also voted 28th in a list of “50 contemporary essential reads” by visitors to the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival.
In 2006, Jilly became a grandmother for the second time when Lysander Leo Tarrant was born on May 1st.
Her latest novel Wicked! about an independent boarding school forming a partnership with a comprehensive school, was published in May, 2006. It was number one on the bestseller list for five weeks and had sold more than 140,000 hardback copies and nearly 100,000 trade paperbacks by Christmas.
She is now working on a novel about a Grandmother who escapes from her demanding family and rescues a racehorse. To aid her research, she in now the proud owner of a twelfth share in a race horse trained by Nicky Henderson, called Monty’s Salvo.
© Jilly Cooper 2007