The work of Jilly Cooper is all you need this Valentine's Day 

I've never lived in a stately home, I’ve never ridden a horse, and I’ve never had an extramarital affair, but what I have done is enjoy the writing of Jilly Cooper, in which her characters do all these things and more. 

Since watching the Disney+ adaptation of ‘Rivals’ last year, I've been surprised by the lack of Cooper content on social media. For the 40^th Birthday of Riders, Pandora Sykes wrote, ‘I genuinely believe that if you haven’t read Jilly Cooper, your life is 5% less golden’. I couldn’t agree more.  

Cooper passed away on the 5^th of October 2025, at the age of 88. In her life, she wrote 44 novels, 11 of which are part of her famous ‘Rutshire Chronicles’. This collection of work was often labelled as ‘bonkbusters’, something that BookTok would now label as ‘spicy’ literature. However, reducing these novels to one category is unfair: not just the romance, but also the plotting and social commentary are carefully placed and paced.  

Jilly Cooper was the 80s/90s equivalent of Coleen Hoover or Emily Henry, and while her work is certainly outdated at times, I don’t know if anyone is turning to these books for political correctness, even in 2026. In fact, the novels, now 30-40 years old, read almost like historical fiction.  

Inside her novels is some incredibly saucy material, backdropped by horse stables, rolling hills, and boozy lunches. Cooper is witty in her writing, exposing the upper classes for their scandalous and elitist behaviour. I doubt her 900-page novels would be published now without being split into three parts to be more consumable, but their length establishes a world you can truly escape into.  

So, if you’re looking for some plans on Saturday, the 14^{th of} February, I suggest going on a date with Cooper’s most famous character, Rupert Campbell-Black. Supposedly, he's the most desirable man in Britain.