About 30 years ago, the novelist Jilly Cooper and I were together in a BBC radio studio. As two young technicians struggled with the equipment, Jilly leaned conspiratorially into my ear and, in her wonderfully deep, feathery voice, she asked, ‘Which of these guys would you say is the most f***able?’ ‘
I was shocked. Back then, the “f” word wasn’t spread like it is now. It was a different time, one I consider BC (Before Clarkson). But, equally, I loved the irresistible sass of him.
Jilly was recently made a Dame and described receiving the honor from King Charles as “orgasmic”, proving that age cannot wither her, Jilly is still a Very Naughty Girl.
A sensual Arabella Tjye in the 1993 film based on the novel Riders by Jilly Cooper.
Of course, Jilly is known as the Bonkbuster Queen, with her blatantly double book titles: Tackle! Mount! Score!
They are stories of rich people and horses living in Rutshire, Jilly’s wonderfully unsubtle fictional county, full of whip-and-skirt trysts, but in reality just as obviously her beloved Cotswolds.
Later this year, Disney+ will screen an eight-part series based on Jilly’s book Rivals. The appeal of her novels crosses generations; even Rishi Sunak is a big fan and said: “You need escapism in your life.”
For anyone offended by the word “bonkbuster”, I’m afraid I’m the one to blame. A couple of decades ago, I wrote a column in The Guardian under a pseudonym as a writer of sexy historical blockbusters, which I described as “bonkbusters.”
I actually hate the word “bonk”: it sounds like a bookshelf falling down the stairs. Still, it caught on and is now in the dictionary.
Nowadays, the genre seems to have a second wind. But in the era of the #MeToo movement, can the bonkbuster really repeat its dizzying heyday of the 1980s?
One of its earliest examples is Kathleen Winsor’s Forever Amber, published in 1944. Set in the reign of Charles II, it is a bodice ripper, following a beautiful peasant girl to London, where her bodice is incessantly ripped. But Amber is a survivor, an anti-heroine, intelligent and immoral. Fourteen US states banned the book as pornographic, and naturally, American soldiers away from home during the war were eager to read it.
In Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls (1966), three New York girls are determined to make it in show business and fall in love, but the book ends in a downward spiral of drugs and despair.
A couple of decades ago, Sue Limb wrote a column in The Guardian under a pseudonym as a writer of sexy historical blockbusters, which she described as “bonkbusters.”
Jilly Cooper was recently made a Dame and described receiving the honor from King Charles as “orgasmic”
It was published in a peacetime world where the Sexual Revolution was underway, but it still sparked moral outrage among small-town prudes who viewed it as a “dirty book.” Today’s young people would never believe the deep puritanism that we boomers grew up with.
In 1963, the year when, according to poet Philip Larkin, “sexual relations began,” I was a nerdy schoolgirl writing essays on Shakespeare. Homosexuality was illegal and illegitimacy a shameful secret. When my mother came to my room to tell me that a family member “had to get married,” her initial tactic was, “Turn off the light, I have something to tell you.”
The divorce was also embarrassing. Shirley Conran, bonkbuster author and legendary creator of the Daily Mail’s Femail pages who died last month aged 91, had to endure the narrow-minded opinions of her parents. Her mother told her:
Cecile Paoli in Jilly Cooper’s Horsemen: a story of rich, horse-riding people living in Rutshire, their wonderfully unsubtle fictional county, full of whip dates and bedskirts.
Later this year, Disney+ will screen an eight-part series based on Jilly’s book Rivals. Alex Hassell and Bella Maclean are pictured on set in Tetbury, Gloucestershire.
—Maybe it’s better that your father died because otherwise you couldn’t have gotten divorced.
Perhaps the growing success of bonkbusters in the 1970s and 1980s was the boomers’ celebration of true sexual liberation. As society became more open, tolerant and rude, with the “f” word routinely used even on cooking shows, the bonkbuster became more graphic, fearlessly delving into characters’ underwear.
As children, my generation had devoured Lady Chatterley’s Lover by torchlight under the bedclothes. Now we could boldly read Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins on the train, and no one would bat an eyelid. In fact, many other passengers would probably be reading it too.
Hollywood Wives gives us a glimpse into the glitzy and often sordid world of the film industry: casting agents, rock stars and the gloriously named Jason Swankle, who runs a male escort agency. A female character is quoted as saying, “I think I’m having an orgasm on your knee.”
Billy Orsini, the protagonist of Judith Krantz’s book Scruples, starts out modestly as a secretary in New York, then sleeps with the CEO, marries him, moves to Bel Air, and becomes the fashion queen of Los Angeles. .
Scruples is the name of their high-end boutique and the fashion details are stunning. A woman enters a party “with the glow of a matador, draped in a stunning vintage Schiaparelli of pink and black satin, thickly encrusted with gold braids.”
For regular women who wear jeans and sneakers most of the time, reading this kind of stuff is like secretly drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream.
The Bonkbusters are bank hits, and the film and television rights are the icing on the cake. Jilly Cooper has sold over 11 million books in the UK alone. Jackie Collins has sold 500 million worldwide. Writers became glamorous celebrities: for these enlightened girls there were fizzy drinks and canapes, not starving in an attic.
But who reads these books?
Presumably the rich do it because they see their own lives portrayed, in the case of Jilly Cooper, with verve and humor.
In fact, her most infamous heartthrob, Rupert Campbell-Black, is said to be partially based on Andrew Parker Bowles, Queen Camilla’s ex. (The fact that our new Queen has an ex-husband is a symptom of the revolution our society has gone through.)
The Bonkbusters are bankbreakers. Jilly has sold over 11 million books in the UK alone.
We, the plebs, however, are drawn to the gilded stages of the rich and privileged because they are an escape from our monotonous lives, as our Prime Minister says. We are like voyeurs.
Of course, it’s not great literature. But while radical feminists have deplored the “trash” genre, they should celebrate the success of energetic, entrepreneurial women. It is also significant that Shirley Conran’s novel Lace celebrates the value of female friendship.
In recent years, cultural vigilantes determined to pursue sexism, racism, and issues of sexual consent have found much to infuriate them in literature. But that doesn’t mean the bonkbuster is dead.
Fifty Shades of Gray seems to have carried the torch into the 21st century. I’ve only briefly delved into EL James’ hit sadomasochistic series, loved by millions of women, but an innocent girl abused by a sadistic, powerful man? No, thanks.
Perhaps its atmosphere of dark obsession belongs in the bloody Twilight sagas, rather than the sunlit worlds of Jackie Collins’s Belair or Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire.
As Disney+ clearly believes, our appetite for daring escapism has not diminished. In fact, in an increasingly dark world where many of us can’t even stand to watch the news anymore, we may need the bonkbuster more than ever.
● Sue Limb is an author and comedy writer whose work includes the Radio 4 sitcom Gloomsbury.
