JILLY Cooper discussed the ‘guilt’ she felt while coping with her late husband Leo’s battle with Parkinson’s disease.
The much-loved author passed away yesterday morning after a fall, her agent confirmed.
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The novelist – who had sold over 11 million copies of her books in the UK alone – lost her husband Leo in 2013 after a decade-long illness.
The couple were married for 53 years before the publisher of military books passed away peacefully at the couple’s Gloucestershire home.
In a previous interview, the popular author opened up about the guilt she felt during Leo’s health struggles.
“It sounds silly this, but because he had Parkinson’s, it’s such a shocker,” she told The Times in 2023.
“You almost get to the place where you think, ‘Please God, take him’.
“Then you feel terribly guilty. It’s not fair.”
“I’ve not cried for ages and I didn’t. Parkinson’s is such a foul disease… it’s not fair for anyone to suffer that much.
“And then you’d feel guilty because it was the wrong attitude.”
The much-loved author also revealed that she had been speaking to her husband even after he had passed away.
She continued: “I ask him how he is, how God is getting on.
“If any of our friends arrive in heaven I expect him to be there waiting with an enormous glass of red wine or a whisky.
“He was such a hospitable man.
“I always love the thought, too, that in heaven all our dogs are running across a green lawn to welcome us and our favourite dog is leading the pack.”
The duo shared a turbulent marriage, which included infidelity on both sides, infertility and the adoption of their two much-loved children Felix, now 55, and Emily, 52, after an ectopic pregnancy.
During the 1990s, Leo entered what became a six-year affair with publisher Sarah Johnson.
Jilly lifted the lid on the pain she endured following the betrayal, saying “adultery hurts very much when it happens to you” but that she “forgave him” for what he had done.
TRIBUTES POUR IN
Tributes have now poured in for Jilly, who had sold over 11 million copies of her books in the UK alone.
Her children Felix and Emily said: “Mum, was the shining light in all of our lives.
“Her love for all of her family and friends knew no bounds.
“Her unexpected death has come as a complete shock.
“We are so proud of everything she achieved in her life and can’t begin to imagine life without her infectious smile and laughter all
around us.”
Jilly published her first book, How To Stay Married, in 1969.
This was quickly followed by a guide, How to Survive From Nine To Five, in 1970.
Her fourteenth novel, Pandora, was published in 2002 and spent 19 weeks on the bestseller list.
Probably her most famous book is Riders, which was published in 1985.
‘Game-changer’ Jilly Cooper
By Georgette Culley
GROWING up, most films, magazines, and porn seemed laser-focused on male pleasure, leaving women’s desires as an afterthought.
Sex education at school wasn’t much better – condoms on bananas and stern warnings not to get pregnant.
Sex was painted as something dirty, never as something beautiful or empowering.
But when I discovered Jilly Cooper’s books in my teens, it was a total game-changer.
While she always wrote about strong, macho men, her female characters were just as powerful – especially in the bedroom. Jilly’s women weren’t shy or secondary, they owned their sexuality, making her novels a breath of fresh air in a world that often sidelined female pleasure.
She put women – and their pleasure – centre stage and made sure every girl knew that they too could enjoy earth-shattering orgasms – and lots of them.
She also taught me that sex – and relationships – aren’t always perfect. They can be messy, funny, chaotic, and downright awkward at times.
But that’s where the magic happens. It’s in those imperfect moments that intimacy feels most real and beautiful.
It was a lesson that helped me view sex with a lot more honesty and humour.
Okay, Jilly did set me up for a bit of a fall with her characters’ near-impossible standards – let’s face it, not every man is going to be dashing and blessed downstairs like her leading men.
But she still made me appreciate the fun, complexity, and power of female pleasure.
In short, I’ve learned from Jilly that life is messy, love is complicated, and there’s always room for a bit of fun – even in the most unexpected places!
It is the first book in her Rutshire Chronicles Series, which runs to ten novels.
Felicity Blunt, her agent, said it was a “privilege” to work with Jilly.
Blunt said that Jilly’s passing had meant she had “lost a friend, an ally and mentor”.
Blunt wrote: “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.
“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.
“You wouldn’t expect books categorised as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time but Jilly wrote with acuity and insight about all things – class, sex, marriage, rivalry, grief and fertility.
“Her plots were both intricate and gutsy, spiked with sharp observations and wicked humour.
“She regularly mined her own life for inspiration and there was something Austenesque about her dissections of society, its many
prejudices and norms. But if you tried to pay her this compliment, or any compliment, she would brush it aside.
“She wrote, she said, simply ‘to add to the sum of human happiness’. In this regard as a writer she was and remains unbeatable.
“In her last few years Jilly added to her curriculum vitae by serving as an executive producer on the Happy Prince adaptation of her novel Rivals for Disney+.
“Her suggestions for story and dialogue inevitably layered and enriched scripts and her presence on set was a joy for cast and crew alike.
“Emotionally intelligent, fantastically generous, sharply observant and utter fun Jilly Cooper will be deeply missed by all at Curtis Brown and on the set of Rivals.
“I have lost a friend, an ally, a confidante and a mentor. But I know she will live forever in the words she put on the page and on the
screen.”
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