Stirrings of lust and a ginger bush: the Jilly Cooper sentence that sent me down a rabbit hole

“Wondering if she had a ginger bush, he felt the stirrings of lust.” It’s an electrifying sentence, penned by – who else? – the English novelist Dame Jilly Cooper in her 1985 novel Riders appearing during a charged encounter between a flame-haired socialite and bad-boy aristocrat Rupert Campbell-Black.

It’s a sentence I admire for many reasons. Starting in a ruminative, almost philosophical mood, it gains a thrilling momentum, before landing with erotic authority on that final, unholy syllable: lust. Impeccable stuff; classic Cooper. If you’ve watched Rivals, the recent TV adaptation of other Cooper books, you’ll be familiar with her world: puerile, horsey, abundantly filthy and terribly English.

I like to imagine the author on her estate in Gloucestershire in the moments she wrote these inspiring 13 words: pounding the keys of her typewriter in a ferocious sexual trance, nostrils aflare.

I first came across Jilly Cooper at my local library aged around nine or 10. My mum used to take me and my sister to the library all the time. We roamed freely among the shelves, picking out all sorts of titles. I’d recently enjoyed a few books in the Saddle Club series, and perhaps I thought that Riders would be something similar. Skimming through Riders was an eye-popping and bewildering experience. I don’t think I got very far with it, but I remember it well as one of those random reading encounters that makes libraries so magical.

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Why did I decide, many years later, to draw on this experience and include a Cooper quote in my own novel? My book, The Confidence Woman, is about a con artist, and I wanted to show something of the character’s formative years: a teenager exposed to a wide array of books, and not all of them morally enriching.

‘I had begun this process full of fervour, but the months had worn me down’: Sophie Quick. Photograph: Charlie Kinross/Allen & Unwin

The Cooper quote was a throwaway moment and I didn’t think too much about it when I popped it in one of the library scenes. I just thought it would be funny. But when it came to editing the book, my publisher earmarked this quote (and a couple of others) for copyright clearance, and I discovered that this was something I had to organise myself.

I set about tracking down the publisher of Riders. On the Penguin UK website, I completed an exhaustive online permissions form, diligently entering the required text into the relevant fields: my publisher (Allen & Unwin), publication date (1 April 2025), material to be quoted.

One month later, I received a polite email from the publisher letting me know that they did not hold extract rights for Riders and that I needed to contact Cooper’s literary agent. Fine, I thought. I emailed the agency’s media rights department, attaching the chapter with the quote in context and repeating all the publication details. I waited again. I received another reply telling me I had to submit my request through their online permissions portal.

Fair enough. I cackled to myself as I emailed my reply, channelling Nicholson Baker: “Thank you for your speedy response, I will submit the ginger bush into the portal and hope to hear from you soon.”

Crickets to my joke (shame, I thought, Dame Jilly Cooper would have appreciated my silliness) and crickets for a further three weeks. Then the agency said they didn’t have the rights to Riders and sent me back to the publisher. Then the publisher said they didn’t have the rights and sent me back to the agency. Eventually I had to connect everybody with whom I had ever discussed the ginger bush and ask them to figure it out and get back to me. It turned out to be the agency and – some long months after my arduous journey began – they slapped me with a $150 licence fee. It seemed like a lot for 13 words.

I checked my contract. The onus was on me – not my publisher – to pay the fee. I begged for a discount as a debut author, but Cooper’s representatives were unmerciful.

I had begun this process full of fervour, but the months had worn me down and now I was depleted. I complained about the situation on the phone to my sister.

“Bloody hell,” she said, sighing. “Well, how about if I buy you the ginger bush for Christmas?”

What are sisters for? I sent her the invoice and she responded promptly with the payment receipt. “You’d better thank me for this in your acknowledgments,” she said. And I did.

Who could have predicted in the old days, when she and I roamed the shelves of Unley Library – she clutching The Godfather by Mario Puzo, I with Riders – that we would arrive in this strange place?

• The Confidence Woman by Sophie Quick is out through Allen & Unwin