Jacey Bedford's Journal

Audiobook narrated by Roy Mcmillan

Just having seen the excellent movie, and with a Roman Catholic Conclave happening to elect a new pope in real life, it seemed an appropriate time to listen to this book. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel 118 cardinals are hoping to be guided by God to make the right choice, but though no one will admit it some cardinals have more ambition than others to become the head of the church. There are factions and rivalries, and through it all Cardinal Jacopo Lomeli, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, must keep order and direct the proceedings. This is a thriller filled with old men in robes, with no action sequences and no sex and violence, but tightly plotted and riveting all the same. Highly recommended.

I read this when it first came out, so this is a re-revisit via Audible, decently read by Gerri Halligan. Jilly Cooper is one of those writers I class as a guilty pleasure. This stuff might have been OK in the 1980s, but it contains a lot of casual misogyny, sexism and racism, which gives pause today. But there are parts of this book (previous notwithstanding) that I simply lap up. It’s like Josephine Pullein-Thompson* but for grownups. Cooper is light and frothy and includes a lot of gratuitous sex, which was quite racy for the time these books were written. For all that there are plenty of females in this book it’s the men who have the agency. Set against the background of the world of international show-jumping in the 1970s this is essentially the story of heated rivalry between the rich and sophisticated Rupert Campbell-Black and half-Romany Jake Lovell, who marries for money in order to set himself up on the show-jumping circuit. Jake is something of a horse-whisperer, while Rupert, through brave and talented has a cruel streak a mile wide. There are interesting side-characters: Fen, Jake’s sister in law, whom he trains to world-class standard (though even she needs validating by a man eventually); Malise Gordon, Chef d’equippe of the British show-jumping team; Billy Lloyd-Foxe and his somewhat unsuitable wife, Janey. And then there are the two main wives. Rupert’s mistreated (physically and mentally) and neurotic wife, Helen, and Jake’s efficient and hard-working wife, Tory, who believes herself to be little more than a convenience, though she loves Jake with all her heart. It’s hard to review this without being spoilerish, but all the way through, Jake comes good and Rupert is an utter bastard, then close to the end something happens that puts Rupert in a new light and causes Jake to act completely out of character. I think it’s supposed to be a redemption for Rupert (because he becomes the reformed hero in some of the future books) but we already know he's physically courageous, so what he does doesn’t constitute redemption for me. I still enjoyed revisiting this book, but this time around I saw more flaws.

*Josephine Pullein-Thompson was a writer in the 1940s/50 who wrote about gymkhanas for pony mad girls along with her sisters Diana and Christine