Novelist Jilly Cooper says damehood is orgasmic

Dame Jilly Cooper said she was "thrilled to bits"

Novelist Dame Jilly Cooper has described receiving a royal honour from the King as "orgasmic".

Ms Cooper is best known for her Rutshire Chronicles series, published in the 1980s.

King Charles bestowed a damehood on Ms Cooper on Tuesday at Windsor Castle in what was his first major investiture since being diagnosed with cancer in February.

Ms Cooper, 87, said the damehood was "absolutely extraordinary, fantastic and amazing".

She was honoured for services to literature and to charity after being named in the 2024 New Year's Honours list, and is known for her steamy fiction focusing on scandal and adultery in upper class society.

Born in Essex, she moved to the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire in 1982 where she has previously said she had written in a summerhouse at the bottom of her manor house's garden on a manual typewriter called Monica while listening to classical music.

Speaking after receiving her damehood, Ms Cooper said: "Orgasmic. Just terribly exciting and nice.

"I never dreamed in a million years it would happen and it just has, so it's lovely.

"I never would have expected it, it was lovely.

"I think it's incredible, magical for me. I was thrilled to bits. Writers work so hard... We do work hard. Books are terribly important, they cheer people up."

• How does the UK honours system work?

Jilly Cooper was made a dame by King Charles

She added that she told King Charles he "looked great, looking really well and how the country wanted him to stay well".

The author and journalist was appointed CBE in 2018 for services to literature and charity.

She was also previously appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2004.

Dame Jilly is a long-standing friend of Queen Camilla, and the author based her fictional seducer Rupert Campbell-Black partly on Camilla's ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles.

King Charles also knighted the Archbishop of Canterbury for his key role in the coronation at the investiture.

The monarch was given permission by his doctors to return to public duties last month.