In the Observer:
In the depths of Cotswold country, Jilly Cooper sits pretty in a 13th-century manor. Labelled by a lifetime’s press as Silly Jilly, one suspects that she is actually far from it.
Her first successes were the novels she wrote in the 1970s about women making independent decisions about sex – progressive subject matter for the time. These novels led to the 13-year chronicling of her domestic tribulations for a Sunday newspaper.
Using her own life as a focus for media attention was something she regretted when her husband and his lover admitted to a six-year affair. But this did little to dull the literary flow – quite the contrary. The affair was followed with the somewhat bitchy The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous.
She works down the bottom of her garden in a gazebo. Originally a residence for monks, the gazebo was used as a lookout for merchants’ trains along the valley floor and for highwaymen. This sense of history resonates around the valley. Cooper tells of spirits which kept her dogs out of the gazebo when she first moved in. “A dog ghost, or cock fighting I suspect.”
The gazebo is an eclectic selection of what Cooper likes. She is a not-so-unlikely Viz fan: there’s a framed comic strip of Postman Plod and a Spoilt Bastard strip hangs next to the noticeboard by her desk. Above is a collage of shots of Cooper with her trusted mongrel, Barbara. An epitaph to her is pinned beneath. Like Hero and Bessie, her present companions, Barbara was rescued from a dogs’ home. Dogs have always been her best friends, she says. A cushion in her living room reads: “The more
I know of men, the more I love my dogs”.
Elsewhere, copious research files, tapes of Rachmaninoff and dog biscuits litter the small space. Nail varnish and suntan lotion lie around next to Tipp-Ex and paper clips.
“I have no taste,” Jilly gushes, excusing herself from the assumptions other people make about her. But she has her own space, really her own, where she sits with her stories, her dogs and her dignity.