Now, I’m not going to try to convince you that Jilly Cooper is a master of language on a par with Flaubert, or that she does with words what Picasso did with paint; she is, however, a master of her craft, and as such, we should hold her dear and rejoice in what she brings to writing. About a hundred years ago, possibly before the internets was invented, the Icelandic singer and all round sonic adventurer Bjork gave an interview to the NME, a British music paper. In it, she said ‘I don’t want meat and potatoes every day.’ Or words to that effect. It’s been a while, and my memory is not all that it was. In any case, there’s a corollary to this, being that sometimes you want something bland, comforting and easy to make.

This is where Jilly Cooper comes in. Although she’s written twenty or so novels, each at around six to seven hundred pages each, it’s the eight books of the Rutshire Chronicles for which she is most famous. Of these, the first three, Riders, Rivals and Polo find her at the height of her powers; sprawling epics, broadly drawn characters who change and evolve over the course of the series. However, she does lay herself open to the accusation that her main protagonists, whilst being believably human, are a little cliché. All of her men are alpha males, strong, headstrong horsey types, or if not, effete Europeans. Men want to be them, women want to be with them.

You might expect her females to be more retiring, to be more reliant on this strong male leads; refreshingly for the genre of romantic fiction, this is not the case. Her women are nearly as disreputable as her men; they are driven, they expect satisfaction (and mostly get it) and are liable to take matters into their own hands if things do not turn out the way they expected. In a way, you could say she invented modern chick lit. If that weren’t far too much like damning with faint praise.

All this aside, any of her books can be read in any order; whilst the plot does carry from one novel to the other, you can pick up any of them at any time and just dive in. And therein lies the beauty; you can read them on a plane, on the beach, or with  your feet up, cup of tea in hand, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and not feel like your brain is being melted by the literary equivalent of a Big Mac; it’s like fast food, sure, but it won’t make you hate yourself afterwards. Or give you a heart attack.

So, as someone who can’t read Dostoyevsky or Houellebecq every day, I’m grateful. And I’d recommend to any of you to go to your local library and borrow some Jilly Cooper. I’m sure you have your own recommendations; who do you think is cruelly underappreciated by the literati elite? Tell us below.