Jilly Cooper

Every morning, after breakfast but still at the table, I go through five newspapers or magazines, clipping pages to keep. A recent addition to this hoard was
"The world of Jilly Cooper, novelist" from the 5 May issue of the Telegraph magazine from which I have borrowed the photograph taken by James King.




This clipping will be filed in the back of my copy of Riders, now shelved in the space behind newer books.

Talking about her 20-year-old Olympia typewriter, called Monica [!], in an interview with Isabel Albiston, Jilly is quoted as saying, "I use scissors to cut and paste when I need to move things about. I know using a computer would be much easier but there is always a danger of accidentally wiping the whole thing. I haven't got round to using the internet yet – there never seems to be time between books."

This prompted me to take a look at Jilly Cooper's website, designed by Angus Scott, at whose own website I read, "To view this site you will need the Flash plugin…"

If there's one thing I hate on arriving at a new-to-me website, it's being told that I must have some gizmo I've been avoiding for years. The Wikipedia article about Flash tells us that 98% of US users have it installed. But that doesn't persuade me to install it and I wouldn't mind betting that Angus Scott would find more prospective clients with my mind-set than among the devotees of Flash. They're more likely to want to design their own sites than to pay him to do it.

The site he has done for Jilly Cooper isn't bad, although there's not much point in having a gallery of author photos if they can't be copied in one easy movement.

Jilly's input consists of periodic descriptions of her social life which includes fairly frequent trips to London to mingle with book world celebs.

My comments on your comments

I intended to post some today, but this week is being rather hectic.