Oh Jilly.....

I can confirm that at the age of sixty, Rupert Campbell- Black is still the handsomest man in England. And in Wales. And everywhere. Even if he is a bit of a prat.Nobody reads Jilly for its great literary credentials, but be assured, R C-B is now a Shakespeare lover. No more will Helen call him and Billy (oh sorry Jilly killed him) a philistine.

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I read my first Jilly Cooper novel, Polo, at the age of fourteen and since then have worked my way through her Rutshire Chronicles, memorably picking up Rivals in a Serpentine charity shop and demolishing it in the Australian sun. Since then I have read and re- read them, turning to them as a guilty but harmless pleasure.

The first three- Riders, Rivals and Polo- are the stand out favourites. Since then the plots have got a bit complicated, the characters too one- dimensional, the animals into circus performers,and the female characters too wet. I could quite happily smack Kitty Rannaldini.

Mount is a far cry from the heady days of the first three books, but it is one of the better ones. My favourite part is definitely Rupert's sixtieth birthday party, mostly because everyone's favourites from the previous books are brought back. The twins, Dommie and Seb Carlisle but RCB a Zimmer frame and Viagra.

It is hard to get your head around Rupert being sixty. Silly still writes him as an Adonis of a young man, and he certainly needs nether of the Carlisle twins' gifts, riding around a charity race and bedding a carer/girl groom.

I don't want to spoil it for you but "buttercunt" is a portmanteau/pun used WAY too many times.

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Too many writers struggle with narrating human relationships that increasingly play out through social media. Not so Jilly who effortlessly have her characters tweeting and posting Facebook updates, even if most of it happens through Dora, who is superfluous to the plot and really needs to be sent away to do something. The issue of Zimbabwean land wars is skilfully handled and I loved Jilly's portrayal of smarmy South African Jan with his "yes mam, of course mam" dialogue and his violence towards Rupert's terriers.

Isa Lovell is now a Flat trainer (seriously, these characters are multi- talented) and bisexual. Oooh Jake dies too. Nobody cares though.

For me a shocker was the attempted rape of Eddie Alderon (you know, Perdita and Luke's son, who despite being big and the son of international polo players, is a Flat jockey, which is very convenient) by a rival, gay, jockey. Not so shocking that it happens (we've had Tabitha raped by Rannaldini and the paedophile ring in Wicked) but that Eddie just breaks the guy's ribs and the plot moves on. NOTHING TO SEE HERE GUYS.

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Unfortunately there's a lot of Etta Bancroft/Edwards who needed to stay in Jump like the rest of the characters. Fortunately the new female characters are nowhere near as wet.

Do you remember Janey Lloyd- Foxe? Unscrupulous journalist. minxy blonde, married to our great hero Billy? Yes well now she's pond scum and not welcome at Penscombe. Not sure what's going on there but she started to be written as a trashy tabloid writer in the last book and her portrayal has now evolved into a super- bitch who is avoided at all costs. I feel like that is a shame because alongside Cameron Cook and Bibi Alderton she was a strong representative of women working hard and achieving their career goals.

We see some more of Adrian Campbell- Black in this novel, and, best of all, A LOT of Rupert's father Eddie. He pretty much steals the whole show with his one- liners, porn addiction, and general lovableness. Sadly he has Alzheimer's, and by the end of the novel he no longer recognises his son.

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Bao, the son of a Chinese billionaire, is a sweet character who helps rescue a kidnapped horse and is kind to Taggie, despite her and Dora and Gala picketing his arrival with posters claiming Chinese abuses of animal rights. Its a bit of an awkward scene because it is wholly unrealistic. I've seen critics in the past slate Jilly for phonetically spelling the dialogue of anyone with a regional accent. With Bao Jilly goes a bit further and has him constantly using a Mandarin sentence structure, so that he refers to the terriers as "Russell Jack" (which I might start doing too) and to people as "Milburn Gala." It gets a bit tedious and I think she may be in for a slating there.Otherwise characters have slightly ludicrous names and heaps and heaps of nicknames (Lark, Sauvignon, Roman, Timon). Having racehorses is the perfect opportunity for Jilly to get the puns in and she does indeed, although the book is peppered with them in the dialogue too.Mount is up to date enough to name recent racing stars both equine and human and to have references to Paul Hollywood and various reality TV stars. The only slip is that in Rutshire fox hunting is still legal!My only real complaint is that super- stud Basil Baddingham doesn't make more of an appearance. He's one character who can stay as he was in Rivals.Jilly, we salute you. You will always be our Queen,Even if your next book really is about Feral Jackson's football career and we have to sit through 600 pages of carefully spelled out regionally accented dialogue and puns about goal posts.