Why Britain loved Jilly Cooper’s raunchy books

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Daisy Buchanan, author of books including Insatiable and Limelight, host of the You’re Booked podcast and Jilly Cooper superfan, first discovered the writer as a teenager. “I think I was about 13 when I fell in love with Jilly’s books,” she tells BBC Culture. “Riders and Rivals were being passed around at school, almost 20 years after they were first published, which is a testament to her power. Her stories are dramatic, extravagant, escapist tales – but while she sets her books in glamorous worlds, her characters are so vulnerable, loveable and human. It’s only in Jilly-land where you get heroines who triumph while feeling self-conscious about their spots.”

As it had for millions of readers before her, the sex left a lasting impression, too. “She was the first writer I read who talked openly about women seeking pleasure,” says Buchanan. “She’s not the first writer to write about sex, but I think she’s one of the first to show sex on the page that is tender, joyful and loving – and to say that you don’t need to be perfect to seek those sexual experiences. In her stories, sex is sometimes Earth-shatteringly profound, and sometimes simply fun.”

Escapist and educational?

This positive attitude to sex was a huge influence when Buchanan started writing her own novels. “My first novel, Insatiable, wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Jilly Cooper’s novels,” she says. “Jilly’s books formed my emotional sex education, and Insatiable… owes an enormous debt to Rivals and Riders. I wanted to write escapist sex with real emotions.”

But while there is much to celebrate in Cooper’s portrayals of sex, it wasn’t always fun – or consensual. “There are rapes that happen in Jilly’s books, and it is very rare that the rapist has any kind of comeuppance,” says Burge. In one particularly disturbing scene in Riders, Rupert coerces his wife Helen into a sexual act. “It’s a really horrible scene,” says Burge. “Those aspects are difficult to read now.”