The Spectator’s Jilly Cooper Competition

For Competition 3372 you were invited to submit a prose-style mash-up of Jilly Cooper and another famous writer. The entries were very amusing, though a handful were a little too pornographic for publication. Some of you seemed regrettably unfamiliar with the works of Cooper while others seemed to err in the other direction. I anticipated a fair few Austen–Coopers and there were indeed several excellent examples – shout-outs to Janine Beacham and D.A. Prince for theirs. Also deserving of a mention: a couple of versions of Chandler-meets-Jilly (Mike Morrison and Basil Ransome-Davies), Brian Murdoch for his Cooper/Tolkien, and David Silverman, who brilliantly yet unprintably infused Jane Eyre with some essence of Cooper (‘Reader, I shagged him’). The following win £25.

Rupert Campbell-Black in jodhpurs. Rupert Campbell-Black out of jodhpurs. Jodhpurs. Bestriding the moist clefts of Cotswold valleys. Bestriding unattended wives. Caressing the warm, plump swell of Cotswold hills. Caressing pliant mistresses.