After going to live in the country Jilly Cooper wrote regularly for the Mail on Sunday for several years and this is a selection of her best pieces written at that time. The topics she covers in her inimitable style range from the hunt balls and Henley to love and sex in the ages of AIDS.

She interviews Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock, Lord Hailsham, the cast of Eastenders and the proprietress of a famous brothel in the Nevada desert and writes about her fellow human beings and their foibles provocatively, affectionately and sometimes outrageously. Her portraits of family life in the Cooper household remain the most ruthless and hilarious of all.

Jilly Cooper was a journalist, author and media superstar. The author of many number one bestselling books, she lived in Gloucestershire where her groundbreaking Rutshire Chronicles series was set.

Awarded honorary doctorates by the Universities of Gloucestershire and Anglia Ruskin, she also won the inaugural Comedy Women in Print lifetime achievement award in 2019, and was appointed DBE in 2024 for services to literature and charity. She died in 2025.