Jilly Cooper, who has died at the age of 88, remained saucy to the end – but the cover of one of her most famous novels quietly fell foul of changing social mores over the years. Her friend, the journalist Celia Walden, wrote on Facebook about the last time she saw Cooper, drinking champagne at noon and eating sandwiches at her kitchen table.
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“We talked about the ‘wandering hand’ copping a feel of that perfect arse, vacuum-packed into white jodhpurs on the cover of Riders,” Walden wrote. “It was moved up over the years, she explained, showing me how on the original cover ‘the hand’s actually straight down the crack’.”
And indeed, a comparison of the original cover to more recent reprints does show the hand wandering northwards closer to the horsewoman’s right hip – no doubt something the Daily Mail would blame on “woke”. How long before the likes of Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage call for the rider’s hand to be placed once again on the bum cheek as a tribute to the late Dame Jilly?
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