{"id":193786,"date":"2025-10-06T18:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T18:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/193786\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T18:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T18:19:08","slug":"author-of-rivals-riders-and-other-rutshire-chronicles-books-dies-at-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/193786\/","title":{"rendered":"Author of Rivals, Riders and other Rutshire Chronicles books dies at 88"},"content":{"rendered":"

British<\/a> author Jilly Cooper, known for her many bestselling novels including Rivals and Riders, has died at age 88, her agent says.<\/p>\n

A statement from her family said that the author’s “unexpected death has come as a complete shock”.<\/p>\n

Cooper was best known for her books in The Rutshire Chronicles, which portrayed the sex lives and excesses of the well-off, horse-riding set in 1980s England. The books sold millions of copies in the UK alone.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Jilly Cooper at The Queen’s Reading Room Festival, a literary event celebrating the power and benefits of reading, held at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, England on September 20, 2025. (Lucy Ray\/PA via AP, File)<\/p>\n

One of the books, Rivals, was turned into a hit Disney+ TV series last year starring David Tennant and Alex Hassell.<\/p>\n

“The privilege of my career has been working with a woman who has defined culture, writing and conversation since she was first published over fifty years ago,” her agent, Felicity Blunt, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“Jilly will undoubtedly be best remembered for her chart-topping series The Rutshire Chronicles and its havoc-making and handsome show-jumping hero Rupert Campbell-Black.”<\/p>\n

Born in 1937, Cooper cut her teeth in journalism at a local newspaper in Brentford, covering everything from parties to football.<\/p>\n

Her big break occurred in 1969 when The Sunday Times published a story on being an ”undomesticated” homemaker.<\/p>\n

It resulted in a column that lasted more than 13 years. She went on to another column in the The Mail On Sunday for five years.<\/p>\n

Her first book, How to Stay Married, was published in 1969.<\/p>\n

Cooper’s many fans included former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said the books offered “escapism”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British author Jilly Cooper, known for her many bestselling novels including Rivals and Riders, has died at age…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-193786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}