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Dame Jilly Cooper leaves £8.5m fortune to children

News imagePA Dame Jilly Cooper laughs as she sits in a chair in front of a large, ornate, wooden shelving unit. She has grey hair to her shoulders and is wearing a blue satin suit jacket, a light blue V-neck top and a string of pearls around her neck. One of her books can be seen on a table in the foreground.PA
The celebrated author died in October last year at the age of 88

The late author Dame Jilly Cooper has left her children with an £8.5m fortune following her death at the age of 88.

Dame Jilly, who was known for her "bonkbuster" novels, including Riders, Rivals and Polo, died on 5 October last year after she suffered a head injury in a fall at her home in Bisley, Gloucestershire.

Probate records show she left a gross estate of £9,070,307 with a net value of £8,557,118 and her beneficiaries were her children Felix and Emily and stepdaughter Laura, all of whom will receive an equal share.

One of the signatories on the documents was a professional polo player - apt given that Dame Jilly was known for writing about polo-playing members of the aristocracy.

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Her hit titles also include Mount! and The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, along with her most recent work Tackle!

Rivals, the TV adaptation of Dame Jilly's Rutshire Chronicles, has been a huge success for Disney+ and stars David Tennant, Emily Atack, Aidan Turner, Katherine Parkinson, Danny Dyer and Alex Hassell.

The most recent series also featured cameos from Hayley Atwell and Rupert Everett.

News imagePA Dame Jilly Cooper holds her DBE as she stands with her daughter, son and daughter-in-law on the lawn outside Windsor Castle. Dame Jilly is wearing a navy fedora and a light blue suit with a navy top underneath. She is smiling widely as are all the others in the picture.PA
The work of Dame Jilly Cooper, pictured here with her children and daughter-in-law, has found popularity among younger audiences with the Disney+ series Rivals

Dame Jilly was a long-standing friend of the Queen and based her fictional seducer and show-jumping lothario Rupert Campbell-Black partly on her ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles.

Dame Jilly's first novel in the Rutshire series, Riders, was published in 1985.

It made the BBC list of 100 important English language novels in the love, sex and romance selection alongside Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice.

Her agent Felicity Blunt paid tribute at the time her death was announced, saying Dame Jilly had "defined culture, writing and conversation since she was first published over 50 years ago".

She said: "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."

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