Dame Jilly Cooper has bequeathed her children a fortune of £8.5 million following her death at the age of 88. The renowned author, famous for her steamy 'bonkbuster' novels such as Riders, Rivals, and Polo, died after sustaining a fatal head injury from a fall at her Gloucestershire home in October last year.
Probate Records Reveal Estate Value
Probate records indicate that Dame Jilly left a gross estate valued at £9,070,307, with a net value of £8,557,118. Her beneficiaries—including her children Felix and Emily, along with her stepdaughter Laura Cooper—will each receive an equal share of the fortune. Probate was officially granted on June 18, 2026.
A Life Devoted to Polo and Aristocratic Tales
One of the signatories on Dame Jilly's documents lists her profession as a polo player, a fitting tribute given that much of her literary work centered on the lives of polo-playing aristocrats. Her first novel in the Rutshire series, Riders, was published in 1985 and later earned a place on the BBC's list of 100 important English language novels in the love, sex, and romance category, alongside Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
TV Adaptation Success
The television adaptation of Rivals, part of the Rutshire Chronicles, has been a major success for Disney+. The series features a star-studded cast including David Tennant, Emily Atack, Aidan Turner, Katherine Parkinson, Danny Dyer, and Alex Hassell, with recent cameos from Hayley Atwell and Rupert Everett.
Personal Connections and Tributes
Dame Jilly was a longtime friend of the late Queen and based her fictional seducer and showjumping lothario Rupert Campbell-Black partly on her ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles. Following her death, her agent Felicity Blunt paid tribute, stating that Dame Jilly had 'defined culture, writing and conversation since she was first published over 50 years ago.' Blunt added: '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.'
