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 Radcliffe (sic) New Novelist’s Pocket Magazine appeared in 1802, a collection of fictions compiled “by Mrs Mary Anne Radclife, of Wimbledon in Surrey.” Certainly Radcliffe was living in Surrey around this time. Mary Ann Radcliffe states in her memoirs that it was her intention to publish all of her books anonymously however she was coerced by her publisher into publishing under her name to benefit by the similarities of her name with that of the more famous Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe. Her later published book, "The Memoirs of Mrs. Mary Ann Radcliffe; in Familiar Letters to her Female Friend" in 1810,