The filthy joy of 1980s bonkbusters

As the adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals airs on TV, we pay tribute to the escapist novels that had it all – sex, money and glamour

“You simply couldn’t get away with it these days.” No, I’m not quoting a GB News presenter deploring these modern times of political correctness gone mad. I’m talking about the books of the 1980s that spawned the “bonkbuster” genre. It’s perhaps the reason we are all so hotly anticipating the release of Rivals by Dame Jilly Cooper on Disney+. If it were published today, I don’t see some of Dame Jilly’s stickier storylines getting past the fun police, which is why I’m so thrilled to learn that the television adaptation of Rivals will be true to the original novel. Bring on the nude tennis. Brace for the Hunt Ball. Bleed your heart out for the Tory minister for sport (yes, really).
There are many novels from the 1980s that constitute major parts of the modern canon: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. However, the romance novels of the 1980s – so easily dismissed as frothy and unimportant – should also be deemed “essential reading”.
Undoubtedly, Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters paved the way for Dame Jilly and her contemporaries, but those 1980s heroines with big hair and strong livers are responsible for one of our best-selling genres and the birth of some of literature’s best-loved characters. They have also brought an enormous amount of joy to us all. 
These books are essential reading for three reasons. Firstly, the sex. It’s all bushes and bums, leather and lace. People generally orgasm in seconds and often in unison. There are no embarrassing noises or smells and certainly no unsightly hair. Perhaps it’s all rather unrealistic but it’s no less real than the screaming pornography available online these days, which is all shaved, savage and steroidal. Personally, I think there’s a lot less harm – and a lot more fun – in teenagers daydreaming about jodhpurs and Diorissimo and “throbbing members” in paperbacks than what they can find in seconds on their smartphones. I spent countless lunchtimes in my teens reading passages aloud to school friends and rolling about in fits of giggles – presumably exactly what Rishi Sunak was up to, too. 
I started with The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous and can still recall my favourite lines, when our hero is described as “snuffling as appreciatively as a truffle pig” and plunging “as joyously as an otter” in bed with a woman he’s just met. (A bit toe-curling, but as I soon went on to discover, the real thing isn’t far off.) 
Then there is the pure escapism. The stories, in their staging and substance, are entirely removed from today’s reality. There isn’t a spare thought for “cozzy livs” when these characters are guzzling champagne. Nobody is having a “menty b” over their latest affair. Introspection rarely lasts for more than a couple of pages before people get on with it (or over it). There’s no sign of austerity or need for belt-tightening or future planning. 
There are no international conflicts to speak of or concerns about technology and its effects on children and society more widely to worry about. In fact, I don’t recall a single bonkbuster character having anything so mundane as a mortgage. They unapologetically wear fur and clock up air miles. They do not recycle (except one another’s lovers) or worry about the school postcode lottery. 
While you’re reading about their adventures, you needn’t worry about these things either. Dame Jilly and her contemporaries are very good at writing about happiness, and the feeling of being happy. Take this, from Rivals: “Rupert woke up to blue skies and birds singing outside, a fire in the grate… slowly the events of yesterday reasserted themselves and he felt so happy he nearly went back to sleep again.” It’s cosy and delightful and, I suspect, a skill that is undervalued by literary critics. 
It is pure snobbery to make sadness, misery, and introspection more “worthy” subjects of attention – the sexual appetites, ambition, and excess of these 1980s heroines are far more interesting. In many ways, they behave just as we’d like to now, if only we didn’t have pensions and student debt to stay on top of. It’s all fantastically over-the-top and a refreshing tonic for today’s dreary times. 
These books are also essential, if you’re starting out in the workplace, to help contextualise many of today’s power women: Anna Wintour, Ruth Porat, Christine Lagarde. One can only imagine the number of persistent hands on knees they’ve had to remove, the cosy sessions at golf clubs they couldn’t have access to, or the constant shaming over whether to focus on raising their children or answer calls on mobile phones the size of aubergines at all hours of the night to reach the top. Theirs is a feminism heavy on femininity: never an unshaved leg or underarm; clothes as body armour; charm and, where necessary, a bit of matronly firmness to get things done.
This is not to regret how far workplace culture has come, it’s to celebrate the tenacity of these women. In Rivals, steely American interloper Cameron Cook works harder than anyone – and has her heart broken the most – to make the TV venture a reality. In Lace, Maxine, Kate and Judy are all successful career women and the bulk of their conversations address the perennial question: Can women have it all? Jackie Collins’s bad bitch heroines are best brought to life by her sister, Joan, on the screen (The Bitch is a hoot). One way or another, they’re compelled to be survivors. They just make it look glamorous and fun. 
As usual, Dame Jilly (herself the victim of an attempted rape early on in her career) puts it far more succinctly: “In my day, you said eff-off if men were awful or eff-on if they were lush,” says one of her characters – an older female journalist lamenting the rise of MeToo – in her latest book, Tackle. 
This, of course, is all about escapism: it’s not genre for a serious study of sexual assault. Instead, the male characters are basically nice, occasionally persistent, men who understand when they’ve been turned down. The perimeters of being a horny but still decent chap are important to the freedom of the books. A bad egg is clearly labelled. There is a careful dance between consent and submission. The women manage to be abstracted from labels like slut or prude and happily follow their hearts’ desires, whether professional or confessional. 
We’ve had a drizzly summer and now look ahead to several long months of cold, dark nights. The world is a terrifying place at the moment and there are lots of reasons to be miserable. But I have a feeling that Rivals on Disney+ could give us the kind of break from reality we’re all craving. And if you enjoy that, then I strongly recommend staying in bed, fluffing up your hair and sticking with the 1980s to explore the other seminal works of the bonkbuster genre. For pure fun and joy, you won’t be disappointed. 
There are five grand dames (well, strictly speaking only two, Dame Jilly Cooper and Dame Shirley Conran) of the genre who ruled the 1980s. Here are my top five:
1. Riders by Jilly Cooper The first in the Rutshire Chronicles series and the obvious place to start. But I can see why Disney+ went straight to Rivals – the horse budget alone for Riders would have bankrupted them. 
2. Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins Best summarised in her own words, “If you wish to be successful, there is a place you should be at a certain time. And Los Angeles in the 1980s was it.” See also Chance and Lucky. 
3. Lace by Shirley Conran The women drive the whole thing, which is why some say it’s the first feminist bonkbuster. Life is, after all, “too short to stuff a mushroom”. 
4. Sins by Judith Gould We follow our heroine from Nazi-occupied 1940s France to the heyday of women’s magazines in 1980s New York. Perhaps hard for a young reader of these novels to realise the eras these writers were bridging in their own lives as well as those of their characters. 
5. I’ll Take Manhattan by Judith KrantzThink Succession, but with more shoulder pads and fewer HR representatives.
Cleavage by Cleo Watson is out now. Rivals will be available on Disney+ from Friday Oct 18 
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