Freeman, Gillian

Gillian Freeman was born in London in 1929. She graduated in English Language and Literature from the University of Reading in 1951. As a novelist she took advantage of the increasingly liberal climate of the 1960s to tackle controversial subjects such as homosexuality. Her novel The Leather Boys, written under the pseudonym of Eliot George and published in 1961, was filmed, with a screenplay written by Freeman, in 1964. Directed by Sidney J. Furie and starring Rita Tushingham, Colin Campbell and Dudley Sutton, this was not the first film to tackle the subject but has become a cult classic.

In 1967 Gillian Freeman caused a stir with a work of non-fiction The Undergrowth of Literature, a study of contemporary publications devoted to fetishes and dominant and submissive relationships. Along with more novels and work for radio and television, she has continued to write non-fiction, most of it less controversial, notably her study of the author Angela Brazil The Schoolgirl Ethic .