Queen hopes Dame Jilly’s heaven is full of hunks and hounds

Queen Camilla has bid goodbye to her naughty novelist pal Dame Jilly Cooper, who has died suddenly at the age of 88, describing the bestselling author as a “legend” and wishing that her afterlife be filled with “impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs.”

The much loved novelist, famous for her steamy tales of scandal and adultery among Britain’s upper classes, passed away on Sunday morning after a fall. 

Her children, Felix and Emily, said her death came as a “complete shock.”

Dame Jilly’s connection to the royal family was long standing. A friend of Camilla’s for decades, she even drew inspiration from the Queen’s ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles when creating her iconic fictional lothario, Rupert Campbell-Black.

In a moving message released by Buckingham Palace, Camilla wrote, “Very few writers get to be a legend in their own lifetime but Jilly was one, creating a whole new genre of literature and making it her own through a career that spanned over five decades. 

In person she was a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many and it was a particular pleasure to see her just a few weeks ago at my Queen’s Reading Room Festival where she was, as ever, a star of the show.”

She concluded her message, signed “Camilla R,” with a characteristically warm flourish. 

“I join my husband the King in sending our thoughts and sympathies to all her family.”