In My Own Words celebrates a supremely insightful, funny and sharp-eyed chronicler of our lives and times: Dame Jilly Cooper.
She moved to the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire in 1982 where she has said she writes in a summerhouse at the bottom of her manor house’s garden on a manual typewriter called “Monica” while listening to classical music
In December 2023, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours list, for services to literature and to charity.
Having sold over 12 million books, few other British writers have so consistently held up a mirror to the British as we really are: to our sex lives, class obsessions and the messy reality of our relationships. What does her extraordinary half-century of work tells us - not just about her world but about ourselves?
Told in her own words, and with access to her personal archive, the now 87-year-old writer reflects on her life and work - from her childhood in Yorkshire, where her love of horses, dogs, and devilishly handsome men were all forged, to her early career in journalism and publishing in the 1950s and 1960s. She describes the ‘macho’ world of both industries at the time and, with unflinching honesty, recounts an incident of attempted rape by a then-famous (and unnamed) author.
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The film takes Jilly back to home in Putney she left 42 years ago, and where she lived with her late husband Leo and her children. It was here that she first found success in the late 1960s, writing a Sunday Times column about marriage, sex and society that, with its candour and sharp social commentary, was decades ahead of its time.
Watching some of her chat-show appearances with Russell Harty and Terry Wogan, Jilly talks with humour and frankness about married life, her attitude to sex, moving to the Cotswolds and the breakthrough success of her 1985 novel Riders - the first of a series of racy and thrilling novels that became known as the ‘Rutshire Chronicles’ and that catapulted her to the top of the bestseller lists.
Attending a polo match at Cirencester Park, we see Jilly mobbed by fans, young and old -a testament to how her writing continues to enthrall.
In My Own Words: Jilly Cooper will air on BBC One on 30 September at 10.40pm to 11.25pm and will be available to view on BBC iPlayer shortly after broadcast
