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 Tocker Mary Ann lived to see how the Reform Act 1832 did away with the corrupt electoral practices of the rotten boroughs. Then twenty five years after her trial, the Libel Act 1843 changed the law on Libel to allow a defendant to argue that what had been said was true and in the public interest just as Mary Ann had argued. Mary Ann Tocker's trial was brought to the attention of the first women lawyers in America in 1958. Writing in the "Women Lawyers Journal", Harry J. Marks gives his account of the trial and recommends to his readers that