Jilly Cooper’s Rivals (1988) is the ultimate bonkbuster - a story of professional rivalry in the Cotswold’s fast-set with lashings of sex thrown in. It follows a wide cast of characters as they jostle for power, conduct affairs with one another’s spouses, eat terrible 1980s food and listen endlessly to Chris de Burgh’s Lady in Red. 

Rivals was marketed as an airport book back in the day, but beneath the brash cover is a sophisticated story that draws in surprising ways from classic literature to create what is now considered to be a modern classic. 

Sophie and Jonty why they are so drawn to Rivals, what we can learn about the 1980s from reading it today, and the ways in which it engages with a wide range of literary influences, including Austen, Trollope and Yeats, but also Valley of the Dolls and the works of Jackie Collins and Danielle Steele. 

BOOKS DISCUSSED/ALLUDED TO: 

Rivals (1988) by Jilly Cooper 

Mansfield Park (1814) by Jane Austen 

Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen 

The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) by WB Yeats 

A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-1975) by Anthony Powell

Barchester Towers (1857) by Anthony Trollope 

Possession (1990) by AS Byatt

Oscar and Lucinda (1988) by Peter Carey

Bilgewater (1977) by Jane Gardam 

Middlemarch (1872) by George Eliot

Cocktail (1988) screenplay by Heywood Gould

Lady in Red (1986) by Chris de Burgh

Valley of the dolls (1966) by Jacqueline Susann

The Bitch (1979) by Jackie Collins 

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