Gillian Freemanâs groundbreaking novel, first published in 1961, was the result of a commission from the publisher Anthony Blond for a love story between two working-class lads, âa Romeo and Romeo in the south London suburbsâ. Freeman duly delivered and The Leather Boys, which appeared under the cheeky nom de plume Eliot George, skilfully delineates the amorous but unsettling relationship that develops between two ordinary 18-year-olds living in Brixton.
Dick is an unemployed, fashion-conscious youth who moves out of his horrible parentsâ house to look after his newly widowed grandmother. At a local cafĂŠ he meets Reggie, an unhappily married mechanic and motorbike enthusiast. Dick has never had a girlfriend, while Reggie is so repelled by his slatternly wife, Dot, whom he married the year before that he has stopped having sex with her.
The central love affair is played out against a plot in which Dick and Reggie become involved with a group of thuggish bikers who rob shops, and this eventually leads to the novelâs tragic dĂŠnouement. An unhappy ending was almost a prerequisite of gay novels of the period and, although itâs convincingly done here, one rather wishes that instead Dick and Reggie had roared off into the Brixton sunset, or at any rate sailed away together with the Merchant Navy, as had been their plan.
What distinguishes Freemanâs novel, however, apart from its literary skill, is that it challenged the prevailing fantasy, often repeated in parliament and the press, that no working-class man could possibly be homosexual unless corrupted by his social superiors. Some of the bikers do indeed âearn an easy quid or twoâ by having sex with leather queens, but Reggie and Dickâs affair is spontaneous and deeply romantic, even if they are unwilling to categorise it.
Although the book was written at a time when public discussion about the rights and wrongs of homosexuality had become widespread in the wake of the 1957 Wolfenden Report (which had recommended partial decriminalisation), Dick and Reggie seem more or less oblivious of the social and legal implications of their relationship. Instead Freeman touchingly and convincingly depicts the two young men suffering the same anxieties that assail any couple embarking on an affair: am I moving too fast? Have I said too much? Does he feel the same way I do?
In addition to these worries is the confusion they experience about the nature of their relationship. âWhy should I feel like this over Dick,â Reggie asks himself. âIâm not queer.â He âknew blokes often had sex together if there were no girls around, in the army and things. It didnât mean a thing. But this did.â None of this gets into the screenplay Freeman wrote for Sidney J Furieâs better known but vastly inferior 1964 film of The Leather Boys.
It might also have been worth noting that some of the most straightforward and sympathetic fictional accounts of homosexual men at this period were written by women. If The Charioteer, which boldly features a love affair between two Dunkirk veterans, is perhaps the best and certainly the best written of these books, then The Leather Boys runs it a close second.
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