Tributes have poured in for celebrated novelist Dame Jilly Cooper after her death aged 88 following a fall.

The ‘Queen of the bonkbuster’ author, famed for her raunchy romance novels, sold more than 12million books in her career. 

Dame Jilly’s children Felix and Emily said her death on Sunday morning, announced today, has come as a ‘complete shock’ as they called her the ‘shining light’ of their lives.

Queen Camilla, whose first husband Andrew Parker Bowles was said to have been the inspiration for Dame Jilly’s invented lothario Rupert Campbell-Black, hailed the author as a ‘legend’ and a ‘wonderfully witty and compassionate friend’. 

Fellow author Gyles Brandreth called Dame Jilly, ‘simply adorable. Brilliant, beautiful, funny (so funny), sexy (so sexy!), the best company, the most generous & thoughtful & kind-hearted friend.’

Victoria Smurfit, who starred in the recent TV adaptation of her novel Rivals, said the author was a ‘divine queen’. 

Her agent Felicity Blunt issued a similarly warm tribute, saying the author was ‘sharply observant and utter fun’. 

Dame Jilly, who admitted in her final interview with the Daily Mail earlier this year to having enjoyed a clinch with James Bond star Sean Connery, was best known for her books in The Rutshire Chronicles series. 

The depiction of the bedroom antics of the polo-playing classes proved a huge hit with millions seeking naughty bed-time reading. 

The novelist lost her husband Leo, who she she forgave when he had a ‘cataclysmic’ six-year affair in the 1990s, to Parkinson’s disease in 2013. 

The author refused to send him into a care home even when his condition worsened.

Dame Jilly confessed that she only continued to write novels in her later life to pay for her husband’s medical bills. 

Dame Jilly and Leo first met at a children’s party in the late 1940s.

The couple became an item after the collapse of Leo’s first marriage.

After marrying in 1961, they went on to adopt son Felix and daughter Emily in 1968 and 1971 respectively.

In 1990, publisher’s secretary Sarah Johnson revealed her affair with Leo and said her disclosure was prompted by Dame Jilly’s boasts about her perfect marriage. 

The author’s first book, How to Stay Married, had advised readers in 1969: ‘If you discover he is having an affair with someone and he doesn’t know, play it cool. But if he knows you know, raise hell.’

Explaining how her relationship with her husband survived his infidelity, Dame Jilly told the Daily Mail in 2019: ‘At our ruby wedding anniversary, I compared marriage to two people rowing across a vast ocean in a tiny boat, sometimes revelling in blue skies and lovely sunsets, sometimes rocked by storms so violent we’d nearly capsized, but somehow we’d battled on.’

Dame Jilly’s family said in their statement: ‘Mum was the shining light in all of our lives.

‘Her love for all of her family and friends knew no bounds. Her unexpected death has come as a complete shock.

‘We are so proud of everything she achieved in her life and can’t begin to imagine life without her infectious smile and laughter all around us.’

Dame Jilly’s first novel in the Rutshire series, Riders, was published in 1985, when the author was 48. 

The book’s release, which came after Dame Jilly had been sacked from 22 jobs in public relations, marked her big break in her literary career. 

Riders made the BBC list of 100 important English language novels in the love, sex and romance selection alongside Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice. 

The second book in the series, Rivals, was recently adapted for television by Disney+. 

In a signal of how she remained very active in her later years, Dame Jilly held a party for the cast at her home in Gloucestershire in August. 

Also among the attendees was the ‘famously naughty’ Andrew Parker Bowles, who remains close to his ex-wife the Queen. 

Dame Jilly and Queen Camilla enjoyed a catch-up in March this year when the author attended the launch of the Queen’s Reading Room medal at Clarence House.

Camilla told her: ‘I’m so proud of you. For all you’ve done.’ 

The Queen said in her tribute today: ‘I was so saddened to learn of Dame Jilly’s death last night.

‘Very few writers get to be a legend in their own lifetime but Jilly was one, creating a whole new genre of literature and making it her own through a career that spanned over five decades.

‘In person she was a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many – and it was a particular pleasure to see her just a few weeks ago at my Queen’s Reading Room Festival where she was, as ever, a star of the show.

‘I join my husband The King in sending our thoughts and sympathies to all her family.

‘And may her hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs.’

Her agent Ms Blunt said in reaction to her death: ‘The privilege of my career has been working with a woman who has defined culture, writing and conversation since she was first published over fifty years ago.

‘Jilly will undoubtedly be best remembered for her chart-topping series The Rutshire Chronicles and its havoc-making and handsome show-jumping hero Rupert Campbell-Black.

‘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.

‘Her plots were both intricate and gutsy, spiked with sharp observations and wicked humour. 

‘She regularly mined her own life for inspiration and there was something Austenesque about her dissections of society, its many prejudices and norms.

‘But if you tried to pay her this compliment, or any compliment, she would brush it aside. 

‘She wrote, she said, simply “to add to the sum of human happiness”. In this regard as a writer she was and remains unbeatable.’

She added: ‘Emotionally intelligent, fantastically generous, sharply observant and utter fun Jilly Cooper will be deeply missed by all at Curtis Brown and on the set of Rivals.

‘I have lost a friend, an ally, a confidante and a mentor. But I know she will live forever in the words she put on the page and on the screen.’

In her final interview with the Mail in May this year, Dame Jilly said she had re-read Riders and had ‘adored it’.

‘I shouldn’t say that, should I? I sound boastful. But I just loved it. It’s wild! I was shocked,’ she said.

Asked what she was shocked by, the author added: ‘By Rupert being so beastly, and all the sex. All sorts of sex! 

‘And two women going to a party and necking one another, and a man in a ballet skirt. Because I’m old and 88 now, I do get shocked by things.’ 

In clarifying that necking means snogging, Dame Jilly revealed her smooch with Sean Connery.

She said: ‘Yes. Sean Connery was gorgeous, I necked him.’

The author went on: ‘We lived in Fulham and Sean and his lovely wife Diane were in Putney, and they came for dinner. 

‘I was in the kitchen, pretending to cook, and he came in and took me in his arms and kissed me.’ 

The pair agreed not to take things any further because both were married, Dame Jilly said.

‘He rang me up the next day and we had a long chat, and he said, “Look, I love Diane,” and I said I loved Leo [Cooper’s husband], and really better we didn’t. 

‘Isn’t that lovely? It was a very nice thing to do.’ 

Ms Smurfit, who played Maud O’Hara in Rivals, shared a snap of Dame Jilly on Instagram after news of her death emerged. 

She said in the caption: ‘Our divine Queen has gone to the sky. Her words will live forever but the way she made you feel, when in her company was human sunshine. Jilly was everything that was good about being a person.

‘Paddington bear with a naughty twinkle. All love to her beautiful and loving family and friends. #jilly #rivals #rip Will miss that Dame so much.’

Mr Brandreth added: ‘Jilly Cooper brought sunshine & laughter into the world. And she could write a sizzler of a story. What a lady! What a life! RIP.’ 

Kirstie Allstopp tweeted: ‘And now Jilly Cooper has died, she always seemed so young and vibrant, I know 88 is a good age but this is very sad news.

‘A British institution, funny, enthusiastic and self deprecating, we don’t see enough of it these days. Bless you Dame Jilly, Rest in Peace.’

The author became a CBE for services to literature and charity during the 2018 New Year Honours.

In 2023, she was made a dame and later described receiving the honour from the King as ‘orgasmic’.

Born in Hornchurch, Essex in 1937, Dame Jilly grew up in Yorkshire and attended the private Godolphin School in Salisbury.

Her father was a brigadier and her family moved to London in the 1950s where she became a reporter on The Middlesex Independent when she was 20.

She has said she moved to public relations and was sacked from 22 jobs before ending up in book publishing.

In 2024, she revealed in documentary In My Own Words: Jilly Cooper how she was silenced and mistreated after almost being raped by a fellow author when working in publishing.

She said the author was ‘a great big gross creature’ who ‘ripped off’ her clothes in a taxi.

The author claimed a male superior expressed concern but then dismissed her when she revealed who the culprit was.  

‘Finally I… muttered out the person’s name and he said, “Oh. That is one of our authors. Out.” I was very shocked,’ she said. 

‘I was almost raped and there I was being kicked out of the office. It was attempted rape. He did not actually rape me but he tried jolly hard.’ 

Dame Jilly was a newspaper columnist for the Sunday Times in the 1960s, writing about marriage, sex and housework.

Her first book, How To Stay Married, was soon published and in the 1970s she began turning her magazine stories into the romance novels Emily, Bella, Imogen, Prudence, Harriet and Octavia, along with a collection of short stories called Lisa & Co.

In March 1972, the author rated famous men such as British actor David Niven and former Labour chancellor Roy Jenkins by how she thought they would be in bed in the first UK edition of Cosmopolitan.

It wasn’t until Riders that she had her major breakthrough. 

Her work has been adapted at various points, including an ITV series of The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous with Coronation Street star Stephen Billington and Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville, while Marcus Gilbert starred in a Riders series during the 1990s.

She won the inaugural Comedy Women in Print lifetime achievement award in 2019 and was made a dame for her services to literature and charity in 2024.

The author was a survivor of the 1999 Paddington rail crash, in which 31 people died and more than 400 were injured when two trains collided in London.

Dame Jilly was a passenger in one of the derailed carriages and had to crawl through a window to escape. 

She later recalled being ‘absurdly concerned’ about a manuscript she was carrying at the time. 

A new book by Dame Jilly is due to be published through Transworld in November.

How To Survive Christmas is described as ‘an irreverent and witty guide to surviving the festive season.’

Her publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said: ‘Working with Jilly Cooper over the past thirty years has been one of the great privileges and joys of my publishing life.

‘Beyond her genius as a novelist, she was always a personal heroine of mine for so many other reasons. 

‘For her kindness and friendship, for her humour and irrepressible enthusiasm, for her curiosity, for her courage, and for her profound love of animals.

‘Jilly may have worn her influence lightly but she was a true trailblazer.

‘As a journalist she went where others feared to tread and as a novelist she did likewise.

‘With a winning combination of glorious storytelling, wicked social commentary and deft, lacerating characterisation, she dissected the behaviour, bad mostly, of the English upper middle classes with the sharpest of scalpels.

‘It is no exaggeration to say that Riders, her first Rutshire Chronicle, changed the course of popular fiction forever.

‘Ribald, rollicking and the very definition of good fun, it, and the 10 Rutshire novels which followed it, were to inspire a generation of women, writers and otherwise, to tell it how it was, whilst giving us a cast of characters who would define a generation and beyond.’

He added: ‘A publishing world without a new Jilly Cooper novel on the horizon is a drabber, less gorgeous place and we shall mourn the loss of a ground-breaking talent and a true friend.’

A known animal lover, Dame Jilly was a patron of charities and spearheaded the Animals In War Memorial Fund in 1998, which led to a memorial being unveiled in Park Lane in November 2004.

In 1994, the author sent the judge in a case concerning pit bull terrier Buster, who faced destruction, a fax pleading for clemency for the dog, which the judge later described as ‘a clear contempt of court’.

Dame Jilly’s funeral will be private in line with her wishes, according to her agent.

A public service of thanksgiving will be held in the coming months in Southwark Cathedral to celebrate her life, with a separate announcement made in due course.