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 Mary Ann Radcliffe Mary Ann Radcliffe (1746 – 1818) was an important British figure in the early feminist movement. She was born Mary Ann Clayton in Nottingham, the elder daughter of a successful Anglican merchant James Clayton and his Catholic wife Sarah Blatherwick and christened at St Nicholas Nottingham on 18 June 1746. James Clayton was already 70 at the time of Mary Ann's birth and died when she was four. Mary Ann's sister Sarah predeceased him leaving Mary Ann as his heiress. Radcliffe was raised as a Catholic by her mother and educated at the Bar Convent in York.