Jilly Cooper: On Failure, Love and Literature

0:10I, like many of you, I'm sure, was so sad to hear of the death of Dame Jilly Cooper at the age of 88. I was so lucky to get to interview her for How to Fail in October 2024. And I say I was lucky for myriad reasons. She was a hilarious guest, someone who had such a zest and twinkle for life. But she's also someone that I hugely admire as a writer, someone who is a shrewd observer of class in her books, someone who historically spoke openly about her inability to conceive biologically and who really made women feel seen both on the page and in life. I'm so, so glad that her work got the resurgence that it deserved with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

0:59And we also delve into that in this conversation. I hope that you enjoy it and I hope that you listen to it and remember the remarkable woman and writer that was Dame Jilly Cooper. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Squarespace is here to support entrepreneurship and help turn your passion into a business. It does so with cutting-edge design, seamless checkout for customers with simple but powerful payment tools. It helps you turn leads into clients, allowing you to grow and communicate with your audience.

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3:13My guest today was so naughty at school, teachers dubbed her the unholy terror. Over time, this naughtiness has served Dame Jilly Cooper rather well. When as a newly married young woman, she found herself sitting next to the editor of the Sunday Times magazine at dinner, she regaled him with stories of her husband and he promptly commissioned her to write for the paper. She became one of the Sunday Times' most popular journalists, writing a column for over 13 years and interviewing everyone from Margaret Thatcher to George Best. But it was as an author that she would become famous. She published her first book, How to Stay Married, in 1969 and since then has written or contributed to another 44 works of fiction and non-fiction.

4:04She is probably most well known for the Rutger Chronicle series, which includes the bestsellers Riders, Rivals, and Polo. Her books were wrongly dismissed frequently as mere bonk busters. In truth, they are full of memorable characterization, taboo-busting action, and humorous insights into everything from the British class system to whether a woman should shave her legs. I gobbled up the whole lot as a teenager and have never forgotten how fearlessly thrilling Dame Ginny's writing felt. Her books have sold over 11 million copies in Britain alone. Now an eight-part Disney Plus adaptation of Rivals starring David Tennant, Adrian Turner, Emily Atak and Danny Dyer has just hit our screens.

4:54Despite her success, Dame Ginny has never been one to take herself too seriously. I'm sort of frivolous, she has said. I don't write literature, but I hope my books have given people joy. I hope they make people happy. Dame Ginny Cooper, welcome to How to Fail. I'm lovely. I want to cry. I've never been so nice about me. Well, you've made me very happy through your books. And I'm extremely happy that you're sitting here opposite me today. Thank you so much. That's lovely. Thank you for blazing a trail for the other female journalists starting out on newspapers who've then gone on to write books.

5:35You really were. Catherine Whitehorn, there were some great ones. I mean, there were great ones, but you did a fantastic job. So thank you. And I wanted to end on that quote, because I think I'd like to take exception to the idea that you don't write literature, given that Riders made the BBC list of 100 most important English language novels in love, sex and... Did it? I couldn't find it. Are you sure it's there? Well, it comes up again and again in press cutting, so I think it must be. That's a cheer-off. I'm very pleased. Do you actually think you don't write literature or have you been made to feel that you don't?

6:09I don't know what literature is. I remember my best friend called Jana Trollope, he was always described as a literary author and I was described as a popular author. And I used to feel a bit sad. I don't know when things become literature. Is it time? I mean, if something is read a hundred years time, I don't know what the definition is due. No, I've never asked myself that question. Maybe, as you say, it becomes literature if it stands the test of time. Your books are famous for their sexual content, but I'm fascinated by your insights into class. when was the first time you can remember being interested in the British class system we were so broke they were going to have to sell our house in Fulham and then I wrote this book class and went to Tristan's bestseller list and was there for 20 weeks and saved our house I think class is interesting because people do behave in a peculiar way I mean in my book I had aristocrat was the aristocrat and then there was the nouveau richards who was the nouveau riche people like that.

7:11You have fun with glass, I think. And do you think it's still as prevalent as it was when you wrote that book? Probably not much, but I still think people sort of look up and down at people. I mean, it's Rivals book. Lots of the couples sort of look down on each other. I think it just goes on, but more secretly, I don't think people talk about it quite so much. Are you excited about the TV adaptation of Rivals? Yes, very. I can say it's absolutely wonderful. Gorgeous actors. Aidan Turner. They're from Poldock. It's absolutely heaven. And he's not even playing Rupert Campbell Black. No, no, no, no.

7:40A lovely man called Alex Hassel who's done for Shakespeare. He's playing Rupert Campbell Black. And then David Tennant, who's wonderful too. He's playing the baddie, Lord Badingham. So, I mean, it's a fantastic cast. Rupert Campbell Black stalked the corridors of my teenage imagination. I hope he did. I hope he did. He really did, Gillian. The first one of your books that I read was Polo and he just blew me away. And he is renowned in your books for being the most handsome man in England. Who was he based on? Three men, really. Andrew Parker Bowles is definitely, because he's been a great friend for a long time, and Ann Carmilla, his darling wife.

8:19So he's very like Rupert, because he's beautiful and blonde and stunning. And then there was a man called Mickey Suffolk, who was absolutely wonderful, very, very funny. And then there was one called Rupert Lysa Green, who was married to Karen LeBetjman. And there were all these gorgeous men I met. So there's an amalgam of all of them, really. So Andrew Parker Bowles, who you mention, is now the Queen's ex-husband. Yes, that's right. And you describe yourself as middle class. Isn't that interesting that you're now friends with the Queen? No, I don't think so. I mean, after all, the Queen's got lots of friends.

8:49She's got lots of dogs. And Rishi Sunak, our former Prime Minister, is a big fan of yours as well. I met him the other day. I went to his house, Downing Street. And he's gone now, poor darling. But he was so nice. We had half an hour together. And he's very attractive. We had a really, really nice chat. And he said the sweetest thing at the end. Sorry, that was wrong, so I got the wrong story. That was Prince Charles when I got my damehood. It's an understandable mistake. Okay, so you confuse the now king with our former prime minister. But what did then Prince Charles say to you? No, no, he was so sweet.

9:23I said, he's got to stay well because the country loves him so much. And he said, by the way, we've got two rather good horses running at Ascot this week. Did you put money on them? Yes, and they didn't win. Did you? But I think they did the next week. I wondered when I asked you the Rupert Campbell Black question whether you were going to mention your father and your brother. Having recently been lucky enough to get a preview of the BBC documentary that's coming up about you, both your father and brother were incredibly handsome, attractive men. Very gorgeous. I'm obsessed with beauty. Why? I just love it.

9:53I love beautiful people. I'm naturally obsessed with beauty, I think. Tell me more about your father. So he was a brigadier. He was a brigadier. He was wonderful. Lovely, lovely man. and he got a first Cambridge. He played ragger for the army. He was very glam. And were these early male figures, did they embody that kind of masculine, macho energy that comes across in your books? Like macho men, I'm afraid. Leo, my husband, was macho. How would you describe macho? My father went off to work and my mother looked at home after us. I don't think this is necessary at all because I think it's lovely when we got to work.

10:28But I do think men being strong and happy about their masculinity and women being happy about being feminine is lovely. So what do you think of the age that we're living through now where some people might think that that view is outdated? I've had a long talk to my granddaughter. She's at a boarding school at the moment. And she says the boys are very bossy from that view. It seems boys still are very macho. Do you think you're a strong woman? No. Weak. You don't strike me as a weak person. A weak person couldn't have written the books that you've written or had the success that you've had or saved the house that you were living in twice.

11:03We saved Putnam's class. We moved to Gloucestershire. Then we asked the bank manager to save the weekend. And we introduced him to lots of royalty. And he sat on the terrace on Sunday night. Oh, lovely old properties. Lovely old properties. What a tragedy you're going to have to sell it. I said, what do you mean? What do you mean? You're going to have to sell it. I don't think your dirty little book writers will get you out of it. And it did. Sold and sold and sold. So V signed to bank managers. Exactly. Exactly. And you moved bank afterwards, didn't you? Yes. It sounds to me like you have withstood a lot of sexism over the years, not just from that bank manager, but also from people who have dismissed your books as bonkbusters.

11:41Rivals is interesting because rivals actually, there's a lot of screwing in it, obviously, because people are sort of carrying on as they do. There's an awful lot of other things. In the old days, there was 15 different television stations around the country. Every five years, somebody would try and take it away from the incumbents. and that meant the regional television was really, really strong and powerful and built up the regions, which I think is very important. Now it's all London-based. So it's also, your books are about power. Power and laughter a bit. I like nature. I'd love to talk to you about your mother a little bit because I understand that it was her who started reading to you at a very young age.

12:20You started reading at the age of four. Yeah, she's wonderful. Very, very beautiful. I read somewhere that she struggled with depression. She did. She hated moving house. Every time she moved house, she had a bit of a nervous breakdown. With Daddy in the army, that was a bit difficult. Very difficult. She was absolutely divine. How old were you when you became aware that things were difficult? We moved from South Lauchta to London. I remember coming home and seeing Daddy looking very miserable. I said, darling, what's the matter? What's the matter? He said, mummy, you know, she's had to go into her home.

12:48She tried to commit suicide. I'm so sorry. At the end, she suddenly got really strong. When he got vaguer at the end, she was really strong. But she died in 91. Do you think that's partly why you have this desire to make people happy? Yes, I like making people happy. I mean, I'm a picture behind their backs, but I do like making them laugh. And is that the secret to writing a great sex scene, is to leave the humour in? I said that the good marriage was kept alive by creaking bed springs, more from laughter than from sex. let's get on to your failures your first one is your total failure to throw anything away are you are you a hoarder i always make about 15 drafts of everything i write and i keep them in case there's an absolutely brilliant paragraph of draft 13 that i might want to go back to and so as a result when we moved to the country i filled up the gazebo in the garden with all my crud, my 15 drafts.

13:50Then I moved up to the top of the house. Then Leo died. I move into his study. Leo's lovely office on the round floor is filled up with notebooks, files, drafts, photographs of people. I'm just terribly untidy. Leo is your beloved late husband? Yep, yep, yep. Yes. Do you miss Leo? I do. But Parkinson's is so vile. You're horrified, but you actually, they say, please God, take him because it's so cruel. Then you feel absolutely poor. I'm so sorry you went through that how did he feel about being Mr. Jilly Cooper or how did he feel about your success Elizabeth Jane Hard was married to Kingsley Amis and she came up to Leo how are you enjoying being Mr.

14:32Jilly Cooper from on he wasn't pleased I think it was difficult for him I think it is difficult for anybody I think it's difficult you go to any party and people rush up to somebody you're with and then because I was with Stanley Tush at Wilberton the other day and Love is Stanley. And everybody would say, get out of the way, get out of the way. I want to start with Stanley.

14:56So I think it is difficult. It must be difficult. Let's go back to why you don't throw things away. So is there something about the past beyond the idea of the fact that you might have written the most exquisite sentence in draft 13? Is there also something about cherishing the past? Also, everybody's so kind. and they're always in my presence. I'm not good at being tidy. I like to be, but I never have been. Have you ever been sent pants? No, have you? No, I'm actually kind of offended now. And I got divorced in my mid-30s, and then I started dating again. Don't worry, I'm married to a lovely, lovely man now.

15:32And no one has ever sent me a dick pic. A dick pic? Yes. That's on their cocks? Literally a picture of their penis, which apparently is quite common currently. Is it current now? Yes. Extraordinary, extraordinary thing to do. Don't you think? Completely. Up or down? I've never been someone so I don't know. I think maybe half tumescent but not fully erect. Tumescent's a good word too, isn't it? It is. It's one of those words, having a crossword, you know, where they say which of it is tumescent. Yes, it's also one of those words that would be terrible in a sex scene. Yes, it would. It would.

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17:47So you can't throw anything away. No, no. And has it ever happened that you have gone back to draft 30 minutes? No, I can't imagine. I lost rivals on a bus. This is one of the most terrifying stories I've ever heard about any writer. Please tell it to us. I was halfway through, right? I'd written about 400 ,000 words. And I took it out to lunch to sort of fiddle around with the full stops and put a photo adage in and tart it up. I went to London and Soho. Rob's got a bit pissed. Then I went to Selfridge and bought some centres, one does all the way. And I got on the 28th bus to go home. And I chatted to everybody.

18:20And when I got back to Parnett, it was gone. So I had this fantasy about some bus conductor writing De Novovdy Century. So you had to wait then for a few years, didn't you, before you could... Oh, yes, this was in 79. You rewrote the whole thing? I had to, yeah. I think it was better because it was a bit more developed. It was finished in 1984, something like that. So it was a long time to wait. It was awful. There's another story around public transport that comes up when one researches Dame Judy Cooper. And it must have been a very shocking and scary one. Well, the Palington train crash. Yes.

18:56We went kind of along just getting into Palington. The train just crashed and all around us were people who were dead around me. And I was pulled out and I was all right, really. but I was going to a conference about the Holocaust. It was one of my books. Of course, I got to this conference about the Holocaust. Whatever really happened to them was far, far, far, far worse than me in a little crash at Paddington. So I sort of cheered up and they thought it was very nice to me. Then I got back to my house in full at the time and my children said, Mum will miss her dogs. So they'd thrown the dogs into a car and driven them up to London to meet me.

19:28Was that sweet? That's so sweet. So sweet. There they were. Yes. It strikes me talking to you that you have been through some difficult things, but you're not self-indulgent. You dust yourself off and carry on. Would that be fair? I mean, for a journalist, as you know, or a writer, you've got to meet a deadline, haven't you? So you've got to do something about it. Do you think of your life as meeting a deadline? Are you sort of ever aware that it's fine? No, but I always think I might need some more money. I'm always worried about money. Still. And how do you feel about death? there's two things i love the thing that when you when you die all your favorite dogs in your past come running towards you across the sun at dawn your favorite dogs leading the pack isn't that lovely and i'd love to see leo again i'd love to see my parents again but i just think all them all up now i'm worried about the clouds holding them up oh jilly do you know what i mean yes i should say actually before we move on to your second failure that you are one of the very generous guests who've given me several failures not just three because you said that you failed so many times you can't just limit it to three.

20:32Do you think this is something that a lot of female guests say to me? And I think it's possibly because women of a certain generation, myself included, are brought up not to believe in themselves fully. And so they often think that they fail. Whereas someone more self-confident might think, well, you know, there's an obstacle that I can navigate, but eventually I'm guaranteed success. Do you think you've always felt insecure? I wasn't very clever at school, but I failed Oxford because I went for an interview with St. Hilda's. It was all in tweed suits and sort of bossy boots running around saying, what do you think of this?

21:16What do you think of that? I was there and I suddenly thought, I don't want to go to Oxford. I don't want to go to St. Hilda's with these sort of bossy women in tweed suits. And so I lied. I said, I'm terribly sorry. I've just heard my mother's ill. And I've got to go back to Yorkshire. And I went back to Yorkshire. Of course, I didn't get in. Have you ever regretted that? It would have been lovely to get a degree. I mean, I would have been very proud. I hate that I didn't go to Oxford. But I mean, wasn't that an awful thing to do? No. They just weren't my kind of people, those women. Yes. And how interesting that you tell me that story in response to that question, because actually that shows to me that you really knew yourself.

21:51You sort of knew where you were happy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So your second failure, which we know isn't really a failure, but it's such a moving thing to talk about. It's about not being able to give birth to your children, but it had this miraculous outcome because you adopted your children. Would you mind telling us, Jilly, how you discovered that you wouldn't be able biologically to conceive? I was married and we sort of, I suppose, made love a lot. Great deal. I was 24, then Leo was 27, and he already had a daughter. And we wanted to have children. And nothing happened, of course. Nothing happened and nothing happened and nothing happened.

22:35Went from gynecologist to gynecologist. And I had an ectopic pregnancy. And the doctor just said afterwards, I'm terribly sorry, do you want to come out? And he said, I think you should think about adopting because I don't think you're likely to conceive. I mean, I wasn't that maternal. I'm not berserk about babies. so it wasn't a real terrible senior heartbreak for me because I desperately wanted children. And of course, then we first adopted Felix and it was difficult because Leo was divorced and so they were a bit iffy about it. And then of course, it's a lovely adoption society. First they found us Felix, then they found us Emily and it was miraculous.

23:11I could never love anyone much and I loved them. So I was incredibly lucky. I wonder if I could wind back a little bit and ask you whether you felt like a failure. You said that you weren't particularly maternal, but as someone, I've also been through fertility challenges. And even though I know on a logical level, I'm not a failure, it was very difficult not to internalise the sense that my body was letting me down. And part of that... And you were letting your husband down too. Yes. Yes, exactly. There is that. Leo's first wife, very, very beautiful, and had six children by five different fathers and all beautiful.

23:47And I think I was jealous of the fact that she was being so wonderfully successful. Also, I wanted children. I longed for children. I loved Leo and I just wanted some children. So it's horrid, isn't it? It is horrid. How old were you when Felix came into your life? I was 31. Okay. And Emily was about 33 years. If anyone is listening to this and they are going through a fertility struggle and they are considering adoption, but maybe they're scared of it for various reasons or they're intimidated by the length of the process. What would you say? I'd say go absolutely for it. It's been wonderful.

24:19It made me so happy. I feel literally within the house for five minutes, totally, totally in love. The same with Emily. It's absolutely miraculous. You've had this amazing present. I don't recommend anybody to do it. It was wonderful for us.

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