Dame Jilly Cooper has died

Her children Felix and Emily said in a statement: "Mum, was the shining light in all of our lives.

"Her love for all of her family and friends knew no bounds.

"Her unexpected death has come as a complete shock.

"We are so proud of everything she achieved in her life and can't begin to imagine life without her infectious smile and laughter all

around us."

Jilly's agent, Felicity Blunt, said she had lost a "friend, an ally, and mentor" and that it had been a "privilege" to work with the author, who has sold over 11 million copies of her books in the UK alone.

She wrote: "The privilege of my career has been working with a woman who has defined culture, writing and conversation since she was first published over fifty years ago.

"Jilly will undoubtedly be best remembered for her chart-topping series The Rutshire Chronicles and its havoc-making and handsome show-jumping hero Rupert Campbell-Black.

"You wouldn't expect books categorised as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time but Jilly wrote with acuity and insight about all things - class, sex, marriage, rivalry, grief and fertility.

"Her plots were both intricate and gutsy, spiked with sharp observations and wicked humour.

"She regularly mined her own life for inspiration and there was something Austenesque about her dissections of society, its many

prejudices and norms. But if you tried to pay her this compliment, or any compliment, she would brush it aside.

"She wrote, she said, simply 'to add to the sum of human happiness'. In this regard as a writer she was and remains unbeatable.

"In her last few years Jilly added to her curriculum vitae by serving as an ex ecutive producer on the Happy Prince adaptation of her novel Rivals for Disney+.

"Her suggestions for story and dialogue inevitably layered and enriched scripts and her presence on set was a joy for cast and crew alike.

"Emotionally intelligent, fantastically generous, sharply observant and utter fun Jilly Cooper will be deeply missed by all at Curtis Brown and on the set of Rivals.

"I have lost a friend, an ally, a confidante and a mentor. But I know she will live forever in the words she put on the page and on the

screen."

Jilly - who was born in February 1937 -began her career as a journalist and worked as a junior reporter for the Middlesex Independent from 1957 to 1959. She had a column for the Sunday Times from 1969 to 1982 and then worked for the Mail on Sunday for five years.

Her first non-fiction book, How to Stay Married, was released in 1969 and she moved into fiction in 1975 with the publication of Emily.

Jilly married Leo Cooper in 1961 and they adopted their two children. They were married until the publisher passed away in November 2013 at the age of 79.

The Rivals author received her Damehood in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to literature and charity.