Jilly Cooper, the queen of saucy jollity, is back in the spotlight with the second series of Rivals. Her Rutshire Chronicles—epic sagas of horse-riding poshos—remain the benchmark for bonkbusters. But which of her books truly stand out?
In the final chronicle, Rupert Campbell-Black is now 67, and his wife Taggie has cancer. Their daughter Bianca falls for a footballer, prompting Rupert to buy a local club. The story includes a gay son and a hot hero, Viking O'Neill, but is overlong with dense classical music research.
Cooper's bad-girl heroine Octavia steals friends' boyfriends until she meets her match in Gareth. Subtitled The Taming of the Shrew, it's more Enid Blyton than Shakespeare, but a cracking yarn nonetheless.
The fourth novel sidelines Rupert for Lysander Hawkley, a love interest paid by wives to pretend affairs. It feels transactional, unlike Cooper's usual celebration of sex for its own sake.
Her nonfiction work caricatures the upper classes with names like Harry Stow-Crat, but fails with working-class characters. Her eye for upper-class vanities is sharp, though.
In the ninth novel, the heroine is a horse—a familiar Cooper theme where horses are central to the story.
