The Leather Boys one starts chatting him up. When Pete walks in they all recognise him and Reggie suddenly understands that Pete too is gay. He leaves. The book was published in 1961 under the pseudonym Eliot George—an inversion of the pen-name of the famous 19th century female author, Mary Ann Evans, who published as George Eliot. Freeman is credited under her own name in the film as the author of the screenplay based on the novel of "Eliot George". The original novel is explicit about the sexual relationship between the two male characters, and about the odds that the hero's wife is
Mary Ann Kilner Mary Ann Kilner Mary Ann Kilner (née Maze) (1753–1831) was a prolific English writer of children's books in the late 18th century. The most famous was "The Adventures of a Pincushion" (c. 1780–1783). Together, she and her sister-in-law, Dorothy Kilner, published over thirty books. Mary Ann published under the name "S. S.", which stood for her home in Spital Square, London. Mary Ann was born on 14 December 1753 at Spital (then Spittal) Square, London, the youngest child of James Maze (d. 1794), a prosperous Huguenot silk throwster and merchant. She was bilingual in English and French and said to