The Guardian music editor Ben Beaumont-Thomas, books editor Lucy Knight and film and TV critic Leila Latif look at what’s dominating culture this summer
December 2023
Jilly Cooper is made a dame in new year honours list
New year honours 2024: awards for Shirley Bassey, Mary Earps and Michael Eavis
November 2023
Tackle! review – Jilly Cooper takes on the beautiful game
‘Sex, puns and labradors’: How Olivia Laing fell for Jilly Cooper’s bonkbusters
Bonk hard and start a business! 10 life lessons I learned from Jilly Cooper
Observer New Review Q&A
Jilly Cooper: ‘The secret to a happy marriage is creaking bed springs – from laughter’
July 2023
Top 10s
Top 10: good sex in fiction
Never mind heaving bosoms and whimpering grunts, some writers – from Sally Rooney to DH Lawrence – depict genuine, sometimes graphic, intimacy in all its forms
May 2023
Rishi Sunak reveals his favourite Jilly Cooper novels on This Morning
PM tells ITV show he reads veteran author’s racy books for ‘escapism’
Does Rishi Sunak really love reading Jilly Cooper – and what does that say about him?
Stephanie Merritt
The racy novels hit on a winning formula: our fascination with the intimate lives of the wealthy
Rishi Sunak ‘ranks racy Jilly Cooper novel among his favourite books’
McDonald’s-loving, sliders-wearing, Bublé-listening PM is also a reader of Riders, according to Spectator
February 2023
Top 10s
Top 10 cads in fiction
Dangerously handsome young men carelessly ruining women’s lives are a rarer breed than they were. But their hatefulness still makes compelling reading
August 2022
Jilly Cooper bestseller Rivals set for eight-part TV adaptation
The second novel in Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles – following Britain’s sex and power-mad elites of the 1980s – will have a ‘2020s lens’ in a new Disney+ series
March 2021
The return of the bonkbuster: how horny heroines are starting a new sexual revolution
Books that made me
Jessie Greengrass: 'Frog and Toad Are Friends contains one of the best jokes ever written'
October 2020
Book of the day
Between the Covers by Jilly Cooper review – as fresh as ever
This collection of Cooper’s newspaper columns from the 60s and 70s is bitchy, saucy, insightful and, most of all, great fun
August 2020
The Guardian view on a book glut: to the victor go the spoils?
Editorial: Many publishers are enjoying record sales – but not all. We must take care that those with the biggest names and deepest pockets are not the only beneficiaries
July 2019
Jilly Cooper tops inaugural Comedy women in print awards
The Rutshire Chronicles author received the lifetime achievement honour, with prizes for rising stars Laura Steven and Kirsty Eyre
June 2019
Bonkbusters are about so much more than sex and shopping
Books blog
Over 40 and loving it: let's celebrate fiction with positive older characters
