21 Feb 1937 - 5 Oct 2025 (88 years)

Dame Jilly Cooper (born Jill Sallitt) was an English author and journalist, best known for her long-running Rutshire Chronicles series.

She began her career in journalism and published several works of non-fiction, including books on class, animals, and marriage, before turning to fiction. Her first romance novel appeared in 1975, and she went on to become a prominent figure in British popular literature, noted for her witty social commentary and depictions of upper-middle-class life.

Cooper's best-known works are her Rutshire novels. The first was Riders (1985), an international bestseller, and the first volume of Rutshire Chronicles. The first version of Riders was written by 1970, but shortly after Cooper had finished it, she took it with her into the West End of London and left the manuscript on a bus. The London Evening Standard put out an appeal, but it was never found. She was, she says, "devastated", and it took her more than a decade to start it again.

Riders and the following books, including Rivals, Polo, The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous and Appassionata, feature intricate plots, multiple story lines and a large number of characters. The books are linked by recurring characters and sometimes overlap each other. The stories heavily feature sexual infidelity and general betrayal, melodramatic misunderstandings and emotions, money worries and domestic upheavals.[48]

Each book of the Rutshire Chronicles is set in a glamorous and wealthy milieu, such as show jumping or classical music. These aspects are contrasted with details of the characters' domestic lives, which are often far from glamorous.

The novel Jump! was released in 2010. It features characters from the Rutshire Chronicles in the world of National Hunt steeplechase racing, and tells the transformation of a mutilated horse (Mrs Wilkinson) into a successful racehorse. After publication, it was revealed that Cooper had named a goat in the book (Chisolm) in order to hit back at the critic Anne Chisholm.

In 1961, she married Leo Cooper, a publisher of military history books. The couple had known each other since 1948 (when Jilly Sallitt was about 11 years old), although they did not marry until she was 24 and he was 27. The couple adopted two children. They have five grandchildren. In 1982, the couple left Putney, southwest London for an old manor house in Gloucestershire. The Coopers' marriage was greatly disrupted in 1990 when publisher Sarah Johnson revealed that she and Leo had had an affair for several years. Leo Cooper was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2002. He died on 29 November 2013, at the age of 79. In 2010, Cooper suffered a minor stroke.

Cooper was a passenger in one of the derailed carriages in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash of 1999, in which 31 people died, and crawled through a window to escape. She later spoke of feeling that her "number was up" and of being absurdly concerned, due to shock, about a manuscript she had been carrying.

In 2018, she said that because of the Me Too movement, young men and women no longer feel free to flirt with one another, and that she enjoyed being the subject of wolf whistles. Cooper was a supporter of the Conservative Party, and was also in favour of the Iraq War.

She stated that she was a football fan, and supported Leeds United when she lived in Yorkshire. She was a Manchester City fan.

Cooper died on 5 October 2025 at the age of 88. Her agent reported that she had suffered a fall.