You can cheerfully acknowledge Jilly Cooper’s status as national treasure and her well-earned position in the literary canon without feeling a shred of affinity with the worlds and the characters she created. Jilly’s recent death at the age of 88 has shone a spotlight on her oeuvre, particularly the immensely successful Rutshire novels with their cast of devilishly attractive macho men and ravishingly pretty girls getting up to high jinks in the Cotswolds countryside.

It’s a posh world of hunting and shooting and nannies and public schools and huge houses, one which takes its privilege for granted. The further it is from the reality of most people’s lives the more enjoyable its shenanigans become.

The changing place of class in society

Jilly Cooper’s familiarity with this world comes from her own upper middle class background, a classification which sounds odd today and probably means nothing to younger generations.

Our obsession with class distinctions has morphed into different areas as the categories which are used to define our place in society have changed beyond recognition. Many occupations remain, of course, but some have disappeared and a raft of new ones have emerged. Where does ‘influencer’ slot into the new hierarchy? What about the dominance of celebrity culture? New tribes have emerged with their own customs and criteria for belonging.

And yet our fascination with the Cooper world continues, and that’s because in spite of all the seismic social changes of the last century, it still exists. And who better a guide to it than Jilly, whose 1969 book Class: A View from Middle England,  provides an engaging companion to Rutshire and its inhabitants. The book is comprehensive and well-researched, with a range of references which includes social and academic studies, Jane Austen, Richard Hoggart, WH Auden, Nancy Mitford (of course), and Vita Sackville-West.

Casual conclusions

It’s impossible to read Class without being entertained. At the same time, you can’t help being aware of the casual assumption that the upper-class way of life, represented by Harry Stow-Crat and his family, is inherently superior, and that the lower orders, represented most graphically by the Definitely-Disgustings of the working classes, are ripe for a mockery which lacks the affection and tolerance of the depiction of their betters.

Not that anyone is spared, and Jilly has a good way with a dismissive one-liner. An educated woman has ‘a second in History and a fourth in life’. An aspiring young man went to a ‘minor public school or a grammar school.’ (He is further damned by his habit of saying Cheerio. Time to brush up your valedictory practices, people.) Education is lightly valued other than as an arena in which to display privilege and exclusivity. Attendance at a prestigious public school is taken for granted, and those lower orders who manage to breach the barriers this presents may still fall foul of the class police by referring to a teacher rather than a schoolmaster and calling the pupils ‘youngsters’. This was a lower-class word in 1969, apparently. And the term ‘public school’ was (is?) lower-middle. Aristos and poshos only recognise one type of school, so descriptions are superfluous.

Nouveau anxiety

Social anxiety, always a fertile source of comedy, defines the habits of the in-between classes, represented by the Nouveau-Richards and the Jen Teales. We see them desperately trying to get it right with their choices of house, furnishings, children’s names, clothing — even their gardens. Toffs don’t tolerate begonias or gladioli or any gaudy bedding plant. These groups are locked into a war they can never win. They don’t know how frequently and easily they break the rules, and have to contend with the fact that the rules contradict what they instinctively feel is correct.

Jilly may have a modicum of amused sympathy for the striving in-betweeners, but the Definitely-Disgustings are brutally dispatched. They pay for their child’s cot with Embassy cigarette coupons. They buy their furniture on hire-purchase. They are impressed by people with letters after their names. Mrs D-D wears her curlers and pinny to the local shop and always has a fag hanging out of her mouth. They are victims of poor taste and poverty and have no chance of climbing the social ladder.

Out of time

Look again at the date when Class was published. 1979. The Beatles broke up nearly a decade earlier. It was the year of The Jam’s Eton Rifles and The Clash’s London Calling. It’s the end of the decade which saw major changes in the cultural and social life of the country with the emergence of different voices, different talents. None of this gets a look-in, because, as we have to infer, the upper classes don’t care. Nothing can threaten or challenge centuries of privilege.

Oh well. Thanks for all the fun, Jilly. Tally-ho and pass the – now what do I call it?