{"id":116598,"date":"2025-10-12T02:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T02:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/116598\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T02:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T02:38:12","slug":"jilly-coopers-manners-were-impeccable-every-time-i-wrote-anything-about-her-over-the-years-a-handwritten-card-arrived-days-later-thanking-me-warmly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/116598\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Jilly Cooper\u2019s manners were impeccable. Every time I wrote anything about her over the years, a handwritten card arrived days later, thanking me warmly\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nThe \u2018bonkbuster\u2019 queen Jilly Cooper was a cultured author whose modesty and humour lit up her novels\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Portrait of emerging writer Jilly Cooper in her sitting room, 1971. Photo: Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/71a9e963-a5b7-4b86-8b75-dbf9d6f8fb99.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Portrait of emerging writer Jilly Cooper in her sitting room, 1971. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">It was Joanna Trollope who pointed out just how hard Jilly Cooper worked to stop the world seeing how clever and cultured she was.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Certainly her levels of self-deprecation were off the charts. I once commented on how hard-working she was (she wrote 18 works of fiction and 27 of non-fiction). She explained, in all seriousness: \u201cI\u2019m very hard-working because I\u2019m very stupid. I\u2019m very slow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u2018bonkbuster\u2019 queen Jilly Cooper was a cultured author whose modesty and humour lit up her novels Portrait&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,12324,117,19,17,23942],"class_list":{"0":"post-116598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-emily-hourican","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-people-culture-magazine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}