David Dimbleby - he's our Gentleman of the Year says Country Life
Glossy mag rates BBC broadcaster top gent for his 'steady hand in choppy waters', gravitas and beautifully toned voiceAccording to Country Life magazine, a true gentleman is always on time, makes love...
View ArticleThe top 10 books about style
From Evelyn Waugh to Lauren Weisberger, the brilliant surfaces of these works show how intimately class and style are bound togetherMy new novel, Style, has turned out to be rather more topical than I...
View ArticleJilly Cooper's Riders: why the toned-down cover?
Small but ‘unsexy’ adjustment to the jacket art for a new edition of horsey bonkbuster has provoked a startlingly big fussThere is a scandal going on in the world of books this week. And it’s not...
View ArticleOur sexed-up culture is the reason for Jilly Cooper’s Riders makeover
What does the new cover for Jilly Cooper’s seminal bonkbuster say about sex in the 21st century? Does it reflect a new prudishness – or a growing obsession with spanking? In the anything-goes world of...
View ArticleReading taught me all about life
Growing up in the 70s and 80s – a gentler, low-tech era – Eve Chase learned all about the adult world from booksNature. Nurture. Novels. If you grew up pre-internet – we’re talking the 70s and 80s...
View ArticleJilly Cooper’s first lesbian sex scene? I can’t wait | Bridget Christie
The bestselling author says she wants to write a lesbian romp, but is that really what her readers want? After all, lesbians don’t have sex in the same places straight women do, like around horses or...
View ArticleWill he need a leg-up? Jilly Cooper brings back racy Rupert in Mount!
The novelist’s new book reintroduces the notorious Rupert Campbell-Black, older but hopefully no wiser, and promises ‘lots of human nookie’Jilly Cooper has promised there will be “lots of human nookie”...
View ArticleSave the world, then ice a cake: how women have to juggle life, work and art
Exhibition of celebrity female to-do lists, from Jilly Cooper to Cherie Booth, offers insight into busy 21st-century livesFew “to-do” lists include “call Jason Donovan, buy secret Santa gifts and then...
View ArticleFifty shades of shame (or why you won’t find the books I read on my shelves)...
The worthy titles people display at home are often unread, while private passions – from Dan Brown to Christian Grey – are shuffled swiftly off to Oxfam“I could never get rid of a book,” plenty of...
View ArticleLondon – the view from outside
How does London appear to those who do not live there? Culturally vibrant, exciting and diverse? Overpriced, polluted and self-important? On the eve of the mayoral elections, we ask cultural figures...
View ArticleBattle for the bulge: Jilly Cooper's Mount! is no return to saucy covers
Her publisher controversially cleaned up last year’s reissue of Riders. Will readers keep their cool over the 50-Shadesian packaging of her new book?The talk on the books desk this morning has strayed...
View ArticleJilly Cooper: ‘People were always coming up to us at parties and asking us to...
The doyenne of the bonkbuster talks about her latest doorstopper, her marriage and the days before political correctness“I think,” says Jilly Cooper, managing to seem both nervous and delighted, “that...
View ArticleMount! by Jilly Cooper review – daft, boozy joy
A whirlwind of parties, hairdos and horses hails the return of one of fiction’s most lusted-after charactersThere is a single word, about three quarters of the way through this book, spoken at the...
View ArticleJilly Cooper: ‘My books are my babies’
The novelist talks about her pride in her father, her mother – who taught her to read at four – and how writing novels saved her from loneliness after the death of her husbandMy father, Bill, was very,...
View ArticleCan you match the house to the writer it inspired? – quiz
The residence that helped Stephen King conceive a horror classic has gone on sale in the US. We have some other properties for you to view …Which children’s novel featuring talking animals was inspired...
View ArticleJilly Cooper: modern men have beards and cry all the time
Author tells Hay festival of phenomenon of ‘married men wanting to have gay affairs’Jilly Cooper, the doyenne of the posh bonkbuster, has given her observations on modern men: they cry too much, always...
View ArticleKatharine Whitehorn: This is how you changed our view of the world
It was revealed last week that the veteran Observer journalist, Katharine Whitehorn, now aged 90, has advanced Alzheimer’s. Four women – three writers and a reader – tell how her radical brand of...
View ArticleGermaine, your shock-jock musings just alienate today’s young feminists |...
With her views on rape, Germaine Greer has torpedoed the chance for women of all generations to find common causeHow can older women, even fiendishly brainy, internationally celebrated feminist...
View ArticleIf having a dog means you can never have another holiday, is it worth it?
Jilly Cooper hasn’t been away for 22 years because she can’t bear to leave her greyhound – but every day is like a holiday when there’s a dog in your lifeJilly Cooper says she hasn’t had a holiday in...
View ArticleA new start: Jilly Cooper on the night in a Kama Sutra room that led to her...
While struggling to write the novel that would transform her career, she discovered the country pile that would prove inspirationalBeing a very horsey little girl, I always dreamed about writing a...
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