‘It is sad to be reminded, once again, that all this horse racing business is about the rich, for the rich are hideous. There is nothing they cannot ruin,’ wrote John Jeremiah Sullivan in his social history and memoir Blood Horses. But the hideousness of the horsey rich is Jilly Cooper’s inspiration: for ten novels now, she has extracted frothy, filthy entertainment from the lives of the rich and randy in the fictional (and fittingly named) county of Rutshire.

Mount! is billed as the return of the notorious Rupert Campbell-Black, although he appeared in Cooper’s previous outing, Jump! (2010), and has been a mainstay of the series since Riders kicked off the fun in 1986. He mellowed much in those twenty-five years, changing from a magnetically caddish