Jilly Cooper reveals sexual assault

Jilly Cooper, the journalist turned novelist who introduced the "bonkbuster" to British fiction, has revealed that she was sexually assaulted by an author when she worked at a London publishing house as a young woman. The writer told of her ordeal at the Cheltenham Literature Festival when she was asked about a rape scene involving a bishop and a personal assistant in one of her books, Rivals.

"That has happened to me," she said. "I worked for a publishing company. I was number 13 in a department of 13, but I was allowed to take authors out to lunch." She said that on one of these occasions she was attacked while walking in a park with a writer client. She said: "He jumped on me. Afterwards I staggered back into my firm in floods of tears with my clothes ripped."

Asked by fellow author Ian Rankin, who was interviewing her on stage at the festival, if at that time she accepted the assault as part and parcel of being a woman in publishing in London, Cooper said: "I did. I won't name him and tell everyone about it but it was horrid, it really was. I am dying to tell you who it was. These days he would be sued for what he did."
  ·