When Caroline met Jilly Cooper
FROM THE ARCHIVES“I love the idea that when you die and go to, hopefully, heaven, all your dogs will come running across a sunlit lawn to welcome you, and your best dog will be leading the pack.”
The Good Life team have long been huge fans of Jilly Cooper's writing, both fiction and non-fiction. And, in the spring of 2015, Caroline Gladstone interviewed the great Jilly Cooper about all things dogs.
Jilly with her children, Felix and Emily, and their dogs, circa 1978
Here’s the interview:
Caroline:
Were you brought up with dogs? Who was your first dog and what are your memories of him/her?
Jilly:
We always had dogs at home. The first I remember was Jamie, a Scottie, or rather an Aberdeen Terrier. He was utterly adorable and had a blameless character, except for using the ruffles round the bottom of the sofa as a napkin to wipe his breakfast off his beard. The first time I ever saw my mother cry was when I came home from school and she told me Jamie had died. She was an amazingly stoic woman, and I was shattered to see her crying.
Caroline:
How do your dogs help you (or distract you!) with your writing? And are the dogs in your fiction ever inspired by your own dogs and other dogs that you know?
Jilly:
Greyhounds are wonderful dogs for a writer. They are so restful, never nag to go out, just lying on bed or sofa providing a comfort and company.
The dogs that appear in my books are almost entirely based on dogs that have been part of the family. In Putney, we had a gorgeously wicked English Setter called Maidstone. My daughter Emily’s first words were: “Puppy get out on The Common”. Maidstone became the delinquent Sevenoaks, an English Setter in Harriet, then he changed sex and became Ethel in Polo.
We then rescued a smallish brown mongrel as a friend for Maidstone and called him Fortnum. He had been found hanging from a gravestone. A gang of louts had tried to stage an execution. He was the sweetest most devoted dog, but used to roving, was always out and about dust binning and on walks tended to fornicate with any bitch or fight with any male dog he met.
Fortnum was one of the stars of my book The Common Years and reappeared as Monkey, the little mistreated mongrel that Octavia adopts. Fortnum also had two daughters. The first an angel called Mabel became the star of Little Mabel, four children’s books I wrote about a mongrel who longs to be a breed dog, but is constantly embarrassed by the sleazy antics of her father, called ‘Dad’, who was based on Fortnum.
Barbara, Fortnum’s second daughter, became Mavis, Billy Lloyd-Foxe’s yellow mongrel in Riders.
Hero, our lovely striped lurcher, appeared as James in Score!
Feather, our divine black Greyhound, changed colour and sex and became white Elaine, the headmaster’s Greyhound in Wicked! He then turned black again to appear as a wayward Greyhound called Priceless in Jump!
My dogs take centre stage in all my books, because I’m so close to them, and as Kenneth Tynan once said, one should write about things you know.
Flash, modelling for The Magnificent Hound
Caroline:
Which is the favourite of all the dogs that have appeared in your books?
Jilly:
All my dogs are the best dogs, but Barbara was probably my best, best dog. She was very disobedient as a puppy and refused to be caught, but mellowed into the most charming animal with a gift for friendship. Her most adorable trick if ever Leo and I were having a row, was to rush in rattling a box of Bonios to make us laugh.
Caroline:
Your best-selling book, The Common Years, was all about your encounters with dogs and humans on your daily walks on Putney Common. Do you miss this?
Jilly:
I loved walking dogs in London. I met so many interesting people, but it was very fraught because Maidstone and Fortnum were always having fights and I got shouted at a lot. Walking in Gloucestershire is heaven, so beautiful, and interesting people, although fewer of them.
Caroline and Skye, Camp Good Life 2021
Caroline:
Your beloved Greyhound Feather died not long ago, how did it affect you and Bluebell?
Jilly:
Bluebell was heartbroken. Although she and Feather were not bosom pals, she misses his company and she still looks for him wherever we go. She was always with another dog so she is very lonely. Friends bring their dogs for her to have a good play and a run around, but that isn’t the same. Feather was one of those special dogs, and every blade of grass is etched with his memory. It was very, very hard to lose Feather so soon after losing my husband Leo, but I know that they are looking after each other in heaven. We have a graveyard for all the dogs, and I find it really helps to go and sit and talk to them. I love the idea that when you die and go to, hopefully, heaven, all your dogs will come running across a sunlit lawn to welcome you, and your best dog will be leading the pack.
Caroline:
You’re a patron of the Celia Cross Greyhound Trust, and Feather himself was a rescue dog, what is it about Greyhounds that stands out among all the other breeds you have owned?
Jilly:
I love their kind natures and their beauty. They are very intelligent and gentle and very good with children and geriatrics like me, because they never knock you over and slide past like a skein of silk. Watching a greyhound galloping is a wondrous thing. I love how they linger on a walk so they can have the joy of galloping to catch up. Equally I love the way they become “Flesh made lead.” Once stretched out on any sofa or bed in the house, they’re impossible to move!
Dame Jilly Cooper
21 February 1937 – 5 October 2025
