Life of Dame Jilly Cooper to be celebrated at memorial service

The life of author Dame Jilly Cooper will be celebrated at a memorial service in central London.

Dame Jilly died unexpectedly in October, aged 88, after sustaining injuries from a fall.

Her friends and family are expected to attend a service at Southwark Cathedral in her honour.

The author was known for her steamy fiction novels which focused on scandal and adultery in upper class society, with titles including Riders, Rivals and Polo, part of The Rutshire Chronicles.

Rivals, set in the 1980s against the backdrop of the Cotswolds countryside, was recently adapted into the award-winning eponymous Disney+ TV series starring David Tennant, Alex Hassell, Emily Atack and Danny Dyer.

Dame Jilly’s fictional seducer and showjumper Rupert Campbell-Black, who appears in The Rutshire Chronicles, is said to be partly based on the Queen’s ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles.

Camilla previously described the author as a “wonderfully witty and compassionate friend” and a writing “legend”.

A number of Dame Jilly’s novels were adapted for TV, including an ITV series of The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous with Coronation Street star Stephen Billington and Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville, and a Riders series starring Marcus Gilbert during the 1990s.

She was also behind the 1970s sitcom It’s Awfully Bad For Your Eyes, which starred Dame Joanna Lumley.

Dame Jilly wrote the hit novel Mount! and published her most recent work Tackle! in 2023, which she wrote on her trusty manual typewriter named Monica.

The author was made a CBE for services to literature and charity during the 2018 New Year Honours, and in 2024 was made a dame, later describing receiving the honour from the King as “orgasmic”.

She is survived by her two children, Felix and Emily.