âI SNâT he the handsomest man in England?â Dame Jilly Cooper cocks her head to one side and asks me playfully. Sheâs sitting on a sofa in a London hotel next to actor Alex Hassell, who plays her caddish hero Rupert Campbell-Black in the new TV adaptation of her 1988 bestseller, Rivals. While I splutter some sort of affirmative response, she purrs on, blue eyes twinkling. âRupert is the handsomest man in England, though rather beastly, and look at this darling child! He is gorgeous isnât he?â
Itâs hard not to feel Iâve been transplanted into playing Hugh Grant in Notting Hill here. In a hotel room with a superstar (or two) and trying to talk about horses in a film that doesnât really have an equestrian theme â except that I really do work for Horse & Hound. Soothingly, Jilly validates my presence, pulling out a piece of paper from a canvas bag, branded National Racehorse Week, which sheâd attended the previous week.
âI wanted to bring you this,â she says and hands me a photocopy of the first page of the first novel in the Rutshire Chronicles, Riders, pointing to the text where âtattered piles of Horse & Houndâ lie on Jake Lovellâs floor.
Because Jilly absolutely adores horses. Starting out with showjumping in Riders in 1985, Jilly has returned to horse sport again and again throughout her oeuvre, from Polo (1991) to the National Hunt world in Jump! (2010) and Flat racing in Mount! (2016).
âYou know, I donât have a very good imagination, I like to have been there,â she smiles. âAnd I just love horses. They are so beautiful. I go and talk to them on my walks and stroke them.â
Growing up in the era of Pat Smythe and Anneli Drummond-Hay, Jilly was herself a keen showjumper as a girl, but serious injury put paid to her achieving the dizzy heights of her protagonists.
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Understanding What Affects Acceptance of Equestrian Sport - New large-scale research is aimed at digging deeper into what goes into forming public opinion.
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Mental Health Professional - Mike Delaney helped to introduce equine facilitated psychotherapy to the UK in 2004 and describes how this work feeds his soul besides benefiting people suffering following severe trauma
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