The television adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals has just been released on Disney+ to excellent reviews and has a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Rivals is known for its steamy sex scenes, consideration of British social class, and of course, the glamorous 1980s setting. What is less well known is that William Golding was a fan of another Cooper book from the same series – known as the Rutshire Chronicles – published in 1991: Polo. After reading it, he wrote in his journal:
Jilly Cooper’s Polo – it’s like Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings – anatomically exact. But it’s not half bad. A simple read, from beginning to end. There is more to polo than I thought.
Golding’s ‘not half bad’ is a traditionally British understatement – he meant that the book was really quite good. And I love his phrasing of ‘anatomically exact’, which definitely suits the raunchy work of Cooper! We don’t know if he ever read Rivals but I was delighted to find out that he and his wife Ann met Jilly Cooper in 1981 at a party. He recalls:
‘Otherwise the party was dullish. Oh – we were both kissed by Jilly Cooper for what that’s worth.’
The image shows Golding’s copy of Rivals, alongside a photograph of Ann.
