Jilly Cooper, the doyenne of the posh bonkbuster, has given her observations on modern men: they cry too much, always have a beard and are perhaps so scared of women they seek relationships with men.

In a lively talk at the Hay literary festival on Thursday, Cooper, mostly with her tongue in her cheek, spoke about sex, horses, football, gender fluidity and Germaine Greer, who had appeared at Hay the previous day.



“Men cry all the time now,” the author said. “The whole time, always crying. And they have beards.”

Cooper said she had “an adorable gay friend” who had lost his partner. “He’s just started going on the internet now and he said it is extraordinary – it is all married men wanting to have gay affairs. Do you think they are so terrified of women now it is safer to go with their own sex?”

Before publishing her romantic novels, which include Riders, Rivals and, most recently, Mount!, Cooper joined the Sunday Times Magazine as a columnist in 1969 – her first big break. She recalled having lunch with the editor, Godfrey Smith.

Jilly Cooper’s Mount! was published in 2016. Photograph: PR

“I said, ‘Oh, it is so difficult being a young wife. One gets up in the morning, one goes to work, one comes home, one cleans one’s flat, one cooks dinner, one washes one’s husband’s clothes, one goes to bed and has sex all night. And it starts all over again. After six months you die of exhaustion.’ He roared with laughter and said: ‘Write about it.’”

Later in 1969, Cooper published a manual for women, How to Stay Married, which contained much the same advice: cook, clean, iron and keep him happy in the bedroom.

She writes in this week’s The Lady magazine about rereading the book recently, saying she “nearly died of horror ... What a smug, opinionated, proselytising little know-it-all I was back then.”

Cooper has been writing about sex and love affairs for most of her career and the Hay event was laced with innuendo. “How easy is it to be surprising or shocking about sex, given you have been doing it for so long?” asked her interviewer, the historical novelist Stephanie Merritt, to laughter from the audience.

Cooper’s next novel – probably her last, she said – is about football and will have the title Tackle. She promised a glamorous England manager and said the English needed one, given that all the glamorous managers in England were European – men such as Mourinho, Pochettino and Conte.

On Wednesday, Greer, the feminist academic, caused controversy by saying the punishment for rape should be reduced, and it should not be seen as a violent crime but mostly “lazy, careless and insensitive”.

Asked about Greer, Cooper said: “I think she’s terribly clever ... I think she’s brilliant, but is there a word for applause junkie? Is that terribly rude? I don’t want to be rude, I think she’s wonderful, but I think she will say something outrageous just to get everybody going.”

Riders, Rivals and Mount!, by Jilly Cooper, are both available from guardianbookshop.com.

