“I think,” says Jilly Cooper, managing to seem both nervous and delighted, “that people are going to be very cross.” The doyenne, as one writer put it, of “sweaty horseflesh, adulterous bonking and beautiful people with posh voices” is talking about a significant development that occurs towards the end of her latest brick of a novel, the breathlessly named Mount!, published this month by Bantam.
For the first time since 1988’s Rivals, her blond-haired, blue-eyed toff Rupert Campbell-Black has a starring role in the story, rather than a bit part, and Cooper has created some rather unexpected plotlines for the man she variously describes as “Mecca for most women” and “as bloody-minded as he is beautiful”. It’s not quite Game of Thrones, but “it was very shocking”, she says, of this particular twist, almost as if it swooped in to the novel of its own accord.
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You can’t say anything now. Not that one wants to say people are fat, but mind you, they are huge, aren’t they?
I always liked those hunky, rather forceful men
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