The bestselling British author Jilly Cooper has died at the age of 88. Ahead of the release of a TV adaptation of her smash hit bonkbuster Rivals last year, Cooper reflected on what we have learned and lost in the years since she first committed it to the page.

When I moved from London to the West Country in the ’80s with my late husband, Leo, and my children, Felix and Emily, I found sex as prolific outside of marriage as in. Everywhere I looked people seemed to be committing both adultery and fornication—even the animals in the fields seemed to be at it, and not just the rabbits.

I was amazed to meet a glamorous peer who, when he got married for a fourth time, asked all of his three ex-wives to sleep with him as a wedding present. I remember a dinner where the hosts, bitterly rowin

See Full Page