麻豆社

麻豆社 Radio 4 Extra remembers some of the desert island castaways who we lost in 2025.

Writer Jilly Cooper is castaway by Kirsty Young.

Her long writing career spans newspaper columns for the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday, non-fiction books on class, marriage and animals in war and novels that sell in their millions. Her romances set in the late seventies - including 'Bella', 'Harriett', 'Imogen' and 'Prudence' 鈥� were followed by 'Riders' in 1985, the first of her Rutshire Chronicles. Set mainly in the Cotswolds, they are racy and raunchy page-turners exposing the scandalous 鈥� and often hilarious - goings on among the British upper classes.

Born in 1937 in Essex, she was brought up in Yorkshire and enjoyed a happy childhood surrounded by dogs and ponies. At boarding school she earned the nickname, 鈥榯he unholy terror鈥� and having failed to get into Oxford and being sacked from a number of jobs for her inability to type, she turned to journalism before publishing her first book, 'How to Stay Married' in 1969.

She married Leo Cooper in 1961 and, unable to have children of their own, the couple adopted Felix and Emily in the late 1960s. The couple were married for 52 years before his death in 2013.

Jilly Cooper died on 5th October 2025 aged 88.

DISC ONE: Dietrich Fischer鈥怐ieskau and Gerald Moore - Franz Schubert鈥檚 Das Wandern
DISC TWO: Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer - Something Good
DISC THREE: John Lill and the Hall茅 Orchestra, conducted by James Loughran - Johannes Brahms鈥檚 Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15
DISC FOUR: Elvis Presley 鈥� Can鈥檛 Help Falling in Love
DISC FIVE: Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim - Richard Strauss鈥檚 Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung
DISC SIX: Bob Marley - Buffalo Soldier
DISC SEVEN: Roderick Elms and the London Symphony Chorus with the London Symphony Orchestra - Felix Mendelssohn鈥檚 He, Watching Over Israel, Slumbers Not
DISC EIGHT: Band of HM Coldstream Guards 鈥� Here鈥檚 to the Heroes

CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Roderick Elms and the London Symphony Chorus with the London Symphony Orchestra - Felix Mendelssohn鈥檚 He, Watching Over Israel, Slumbers Not
BOOK CHOICE: The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
LUXURY CHOICE: A sack of nuts

Producer: Cathy Drysdale

First broadcast on 麻豆社 Radio 4 in 2016.

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