The “Queen of the Bonkbusters” is dead. Let the bells toll and the organ of every British cathedral thunder out “Galloping Home”. Jilly Cooper wasn’t just a writer to the millions who adored her; she was a symbol of something profoundly British and endlessly comforting. Cooper’s fictional county of Rutshire, based on her own beloved Gloucestershire, conjured up rolling hills, fetlocks, labradors, Agas, cocktail hour, rogues called Rupert, sweet girls called Tiggy, al fresco orgasms and laughing in bed. Or what the writer Caitlin Moran once described as “sex Narnia”.

True, there were no talking animals in Cooper Land, but her lurchers, labs and thoroughbreds were easily on a par with the human characters and their deaths are often more tear-jerking. For readers raised on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Black Beauty, it was an easy transition to take your crush on Aslan or a beautiful horse, then move it up a notch to animal-loving Rupert Campbell-Black.

open image in gallery Jilly Cooper at The Queen’s Reading Room Festival, a literary event celebrating the power and benefits of reading in September this year ( PA )

As one giggling female character says in Riders, after glimpsing a stallion in a state of arousal: “Aren’t horses rude?” Cooper could certainly be rude, but in a delectable fashion like a Mrs Kipling of sex.