Queen remembers Yorkshire's Dame Jilly Cooper at star-studded memorial
Dame Jilly Cooper was indisputably literary royalty – and the Queen herself paid her respects at a memorial service in London on Friday.
Camilla was a friend of Dame Jilly, who died unexpectedly last year aged 88 following a fall at her Gloucestershire home.
Dame Jilly’s funeral was held privately, but Friday’s memorial service at Southwark Cathedral was attended by stars including Joanna Lumley, Derek Jacobi and Gyles Brandreth.
Other attendees were stars of the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals, one of Dame Jilly’s ‘Rutshire Chronicles,’ including David Tennant and Danny Dyer.
At the service, the Dean of Southwark Dr Mark Oakley said: “Dame Jilly Cooper was a person with a champagne soul, of good vintage and sparkling for all its worth, a person who understood human privacies and intimacy, and who read the human heart, its needs and its extremities, carefully.
“Full of light, she lit up places and people, a collage of rare humane qualities, and a friend who brought comfort, compassion, and excitement.”
The successful author’s fictional seducer and showjumper Rupert Campbell-Black, who appears in The Rutshire Chronicles, is said to be partly based on the Queen’s ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles, who was among guests at the service.
Dame Jilly grew up in Ilkley and attended Moorfield School.
Speaking after the service, Dame Joanna Lumley said: “I think what moved me most in the service was just the sheer adoration in that great stuffed cathedral. Every single seat was taken, and everybody was there because they knew Jilly.
“She was adored because she was adorable. She never had a hard or horrid word to say about anybody.”