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The Leather Boys
Outsider Classics is Dead Ink's resurrection ground for the strange, the silenced, and the outcasts. This series exhumes lost literary voices that were ahead of their time to restore them to the cult status they always deserved. From forgotten masterpieces to once-censored provocations, each title is a reaction against the canon curated for readers who want to stray into the margins and away from the mainstream. Dick and Reggie are 'leather boys', working-class London teens with an affinity for leather jackets and motorcycles who become friends through their involvement in a gang. For Dick, the money he gets from the gang's thefts helps to support his ailing grandmother; for Reggie, membership in the gang provides relief from an unhappy home life and a loveless marriage. When Reggie decides to leave his unfaithful wife and move in with Dick, the two soon discover their feelings for each other are much stronger than mere friendship. As they make plans for their future together, will they find the happiness they seek, or is their love doomed to end in tragedy? The first novel to offer an authentic portrayal of love between ordinary, working-class young men, Gillian Freeman's The Leather Boys is a groundbreaking classic of gay fiction that remains moving and compelling today. Freeman's novel and its 1964 film adaptation played a vital part in liberalizing British attitudes towards homosexuality.
205 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 20, 2025
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About the author
Gillian Freeman
23 books10 followersBorn in London, daughter of Dr. Jack Freeman and his wife, she graduated in English Language and Literature from the University of Reading in 1951. She married Edward Thorpe, novelist and ballet critic of the Evening Standard, in 1955. They have two daughters. One of her best known books was the 1961 novel The Leather Boys (published under the pseudonym Eliot George, a reference to the writer George Eliot), a story of a gay relationship between two young working-class men, later turned into a film for which she wrote the screenplay, this time under her own name. The novel was commissioned by the publisher Anthony Blond, who wanted a story about a "Romeo and Romeo in the South London suburbs". Her non-fiction book The Undergrowth of Literature (1967), was a pioneering study of pornography. In 1979, on another commission from Blond, she wrote a fictional diary, Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1938–48; Freeman's authorship was not at first revealed and many readers took it to be genuine. Her most recent book is But Nobody Lives in Bloomsbury (2006), a fictional study of the Bloomsbury Group.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 2, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and Dead Ink for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.
Gay bikers are really in the public eye right now, thanks to the provocative press surrounding the upcoming BDSM drama Pillion. I’ve not seen it yet, nor have I read the novel it is based on. The sensation of it all, though, is nothing new to me. Ever since Kenneth Anger picked up a camera and Tom of Finland first put pen to paper, the man in leather has been an icon of gay culture, and probably for even longer before then. Gillian Freeman’s The Leather Boys solidifies this association, but certainly not how you might expect.
Despite what the title brings to mind, The Leather Boys is fairly tame from a sexual point of view. I suppose it predates the association of leather with kink, or at least in the popular imagination. I amused myself by scrolling through past covers of the novel, the pulpier the better: one features a man and a woman in motorcycle gear, which a reader would be extremely misled by, and another has that Tom of Finland burly style—a reader wouldn’t really find what that implies either. I imagine the original publishers had a tough time figuring out how to market the novel, a gay, working-class story by a middle-class, heterosexual woman, written when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. I hope this new edition does well to give it the audience it deserves.
The novel switches between two third-person perspectives: first there is Dick, a young man living with and looking after his ailing grandmother in south London. Then there is Reggie, who distracts himself from his unhappy marriage by hanging around with a biker gang. They meet at a late-night café, and from there Dick becomes enticed towards Reggie and his group’s dangerous culture. As circumstances change, the two become closer, and their desperation for money leads them to risk everything.
As a cultural artefact, I found this novel fascinating. It does well to sidestep a lot of tropes about gay men, which certainly would’ve been prevalent in the fifties and sixties. To me, hypermasculinity is just as queer as femininity (if not more, thinking back to my previous references), but I don’t think that was the case then, considering the ‘sissy’ archetype widespread in Hollywood. There is a scene in which Dick goes to the docks and is repulsed by the ‘queers’ there, who powder their faces and flirt openly. It’s a shame, though perhaps not surprising, that Dick aims to separate himself and Reggie from these men: I think this scene was not necessarily Freeman slandering that form of gayness, but expressing that homosexuality takes more forms than the stereotypical. As aforementioned, the novel is not sexually explicit at all, but it is, so to speak, explicit about the relationship between the men being sexual; it is stated right there on the page without a hint of condemnation. The fact that they do not see themselves as homosexual (or in Reggie’s case, bisexual) might be disappointing for a reader, but I can understand contextually why that is.
Continuing about the novel’s cultural significance, it is rare to read a working-class queer narrative, even now. Although E.M. Forster’s Maurice is a fantastic novel, I can’t imagine fumblings at Cambridge and on country estates meant anything to the majority of British gay men in the mid-twentieth century—and even then, it wasn’t publicly available at the time The Leather Boys was published. In her new introduction, Kaye Mitchell references A Taste of Honey, which features gay art student Geoffery as a supporting character. I can see parallels between that play and this novel, primarily their working-class settings, unconventional family models and their film adaptations within the British new wave/kitchen sink realism movement. Both present gay men as sympathetic (“homosexuals—they’re just like us!”), anticipating homosexuality’s decriminalisation in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. I think that British gay literature is too frequently divided into two halves, pre- and post-1967, and it is too simple to assume that everyone hated and feared queerness before then, and accepted it after. Freeman choosing to write this speaks volumes about queerness existing as an open secret in the late 1950s, and that knowledge of it by those such as her was not always in a negative light.
As a novel, The Leather Boys is immensely readable, reminding me why I so frequently choose books from the mid-twentieth century. The prose is clean and direct, without being too dry or detached. Almost everything happens through action; we don’t spend long periods of time inside the character’s heads, and the fact that they don’t experience much emotional turmoil about their sexuality is something in itself. The ending bothered me a bit, though I accepted it, understanding why it had to be that way. My only major critique would be that everything happens too fast. Dick and Reggie’s relationship is consummated sooner than I expected, which is fine, but the idea of love is raised too quickly and without question. The time passing might have been longer than it appeared on the page, but for a reader it felt immediate. I would have liked to see more development of their relationship itself, as the novel turns its focus after that to another plot point, but I still thought it was very good overall.
Gay bikers are really in the public eye right now, thanks to the provocative press surrounding the upcoming BDSM drama Pillion. I’ve not seen it yet, nor have I read the novel it is based on. The sensation of it all, though, is nothing new to me. Ever since Kenneth Anger picked up a camera and Tom of Finland first put pen to paper, the man in leather has been an icon of gay culture, and probably for even longer before then. Gillian Freeman’s The Leather Boys solidifies this association, but certainly not how you might expect.
Despite what the title brings to mind, The Leather Boys is fairly tame from a sexual point of view. I suppose it predates the association of leather with kink, or at least in the popular imagination. I amused myself by scrolling through past covers of the novel, the pulpier the better: one features a man and a woman in motorcycle gear, which a reader would be extremely misled by, and another has that Tom of Finland burly style—a reader wouldn’t really find what that implies either. I imagine the original publishers had a tough time figuring out how to market the novel, a gay, working-class story by a middle-class, heterosexual woman, written when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. I hope this new edition does well to give it the audience it deserves.
The novel switches between two third-person perspectives: first there is Dick, a young man living with and looking after his ailing grandmother in south London. Then there is Reggie, who distracts himself from his unhappy marriage by hanging around with a biker gang. They meet at a late-night café, and from there Dick becomes enticed towards Reggie and his group’s dangerous culture. As circumstances change, the two become closer, and their desperation for money leads them to risk everything.
As a cultural artefact, I found this novel fascinating. It does well to sidestep a lot of tropes about gay men, which certainly would’ve been prevalent in the fifties and sixties. To me, hypermasculinity is just as queer as femininity (if not more, thinking back to my previous references), but I don’t think that was the case then, considering the ‘sissy’ archetype widespread in Hollywood. There is a scene in which Dick goes to the docks and is repulsed by the ‘queers’ there, who powder their faces and flirt openly. It’s a shame, though perhaps not surprising, that Dick aims to separate himself and Reggie from these men: I think this scene was not necessarily Freeman slandering that form of gayness, but expressing that homosexuality takes more forms than the stereotypical. As aforementioned, the novel is not sexually explicit at all, but it is, so to speak, explicit about the relationship between the men being sexual; it is stated right there on the page without a hint of condemnation. The fact that they do not see themselves as homosexual (or in Reggie’s case, bisexual) might be disappointing for a reader, but I can understand contextually why that is.
Continuing about the novel’s cultural significance, it is rare to read a working-class queer narrative, even now. Although E.M. Forster’s Maurice is a fantastic novel, I can’t imagine fumblings at Cambridge and on country estates meant anything to the majority of British gay men in the mid-twentieth century—and even then, it wasn’t publicly available at the time The Leather Boys was published. In her new introduction, Kaye Mitchell references A Taste of Honey, which features gay art student Geoffery as a supporting character. I can see parallels between that play and this novel, primarily their working-class settings, unconventional family models and their film adaptations within the British new wave/kitchen sink realism movement. Both present gay men as sympathetic (“homosexuals—they’re just like us!”), anticipating homosexuality’s decriminalisation in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. I think that British gay literature is too frequently divided into two halves, pre- and post-1967, and it is too simple to assume that everyone hated and feared queerness before then, and accepted it after. Freeman choosing to write this speaks volumes about queerness existing as an open secret in the late 1950s, and that knowledge of it by those such as her was not always in a negative light.
As a novel, The Leather Boys is immensely readable, reminding me why I so frequently choose books from the mid-twentieth century. The prose is clean and direct, without being too dry or detached. Almost everything happens through action; we don’t spend long periods of time inside the character’s heads, and the fact that they don’t experience much emotional turmoil about their sexuality is something in itself. The ending bothered me a bit, though I accepted it, understanding why it had to be that way. My only major critique would be that everything happens too fast. Dick and Reggie’s relationship is consummated sooner than I expected, which is fine, but the idea of love is raised too quickly and without question. The time passing might have been longer than it appeared on the page, but for a reader it felt immediate. I would have liked to see more development of their relationship itself, as the novel turns its focus after that to another plot point, but I still thought it was very good overall.
December 14, 2025
lol I was desperate for more intimacy in this!
I think it has the potential to make a stunning film but was not impressed with the book.
I think it has the potential to make a stunning film but was not impressed with the book.
October 29, 2025
Ambientato nella Londra operaia dei primi anni ’60, Il romanzo uscì quando l’omosessualità maschile in Inghilterra era ancora illegale (la legge che la depenalizzava sarebbe arrivata nel 1967). Racconta la storia di due giovani “leather boys” (ragazzi in giacche di pelle e motociclette) della working class: Dick, che vive con la nonna vedova, e Reggie, intrappolato in un matrimonio insoddisfacente. I due si avvicinano attraverso il mondo del motorismo, della gang, delle rapine minori, e finiscono per sviluppare un rapporto affettivo che va oltre l’amicizia. Lo stile è relativamente asciutto, privo di grandi fronzoli sentimentali, il che accentua la sincerità del racconto. E' breve, se cerchi una narrazione molto ampia, psicologicamente profondissima o modernamente strutturata, potresti trovarlo un po’ “datato” rispetto agli standard contemporanei.
A me è piaciuto il finale. È un finale amaro, di quelli che sembrano usciti da un film: Dick, rimasto solo, prende la moto di Reggie e si lancia verso il tramonto — verso quel futuro che avevano sognato insieme, ma che purtroppo solo lui potrà vivere. È un’immagine potente, simbolica, che racchiude tutto il senso del romanzo: la libertà cercata, l’amore perduto, e la necessità di andare avanti comunque.
A me è piaciuto il finale. È un finale amaro, di quelli che sembrano usciti da un film: Dick, rimasto solo, prende la moto di Reggie e si lancia verso il tramonto — verso quel futuro che avevano sognato insieme, ma che purtroppo solo lui potrà vivere. È un’immagine potente, simbolica, che racchiude tutto il senso del romanzo: la libertà cercata, l’amore perduto, e la necessità di andare avanti comunque.
Old people forgot quickly. He thought they minded about things less. Like Aunt Lily. She adored her husband but when he died she cried for a day or two, then tidied up the house, ate more heartily and drank more stout than ever before. She talked about ‘poor old Fred’ as if he had never really lived in the place. Dick knew that in a few days Gran would refer to Grand-dad as ‘poor’. The dead were always ‘poor’.
‘Do you want to go back?’
‘No,’ Reggie answered quickly. He paused. ‘I want to stay ’ere.’
‘I love you,’ Dick said. He couldn’t believe he had said it and when Reggie didn’t answer he wondered if in fact he had. He didn’t know how to go on.
‘When you kiss me and that,’ he said at last, nervously, ‘you don’t pretend I’m a girl or anything?’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Reggie said. ‘ ’Ow could I pretend you was a girl? You’re the wrong shape.’
That’s not what I meant, thought Dick.
‘I don’t want to pretend you’re a girl neither,’ Reggie said suddenly, his voice far louder than before.
‘I don’t think you are either,’ Dick said. ‘I mean I know you aren’t but I wouldn’t want you to be. I love you as you are.’ After a while he added, ‘It’s funny, isn’t it. I mean we don’t want to put on lipstick or anything like that, do we?’
He only wanted Reggie, whatever keeping him entailed. He would steal, lie or kill to keep Reggie. He was burdened by his love for Reggie, full of jealousy and anxiety. All he wanted was for this episode to be over, and to be with Reggie, far away, at sea.
October 19, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ — A Bold, Tender, and Timeless Portrait of Love and Defiance
Gillian Freeman’s The Leather Boys is a daring, compassionate masterpiece that feels as raw and relevant today as it did when first published in 1961. Long overlooked and now revived through Dead Ink’s Outsider Classics series, this novel stands as a landmark of queer literature—one that captures working-class life, forbidden love, and quiet rebellion with rare honesty and empathy.
Set in postwar London, Freeman’s story follows Dick and Reggie, two young men bound by a shared love of motorcycles, leather jackets, and the gritty energy of their surroundings. What begins as a friendship forged in escape—Dick from poverty and family duty, Reggie from a suffocating marriage—slowly deepens into something far more intimate. Freeman’s portrayal of their evolving relationship is both subtle and deeply human, capturing the vulnerability and confusion of love discovered in a world that refuses to acknowledge it.
What makes The Leather Boys extraordinary is Freeman’s refusal to sensationalize. Instead, she writes with unflinching realism and compassion, giving voice to characters who, in their time, were largely invisible. Her prose hums with the sounds of London’s streets and pubs, her dialogue sharp and authentic, reflecting the rhythms and struggles of working-class youth. Through Dick and Reggie, Freeman explores themes of masculinity, identity, and belonging—revealing how tenderness can exist even in the harshest corners of society.
It’s also a striking social document. Beneath the intimate love story runs a current of class tension, moral hypocrisy, and the quiet suffocation of postwar conformity. Freeman doesn’t just tell a story of two men in love; she dissects the society that seeks to deny them happiness. That quiet courage—writing with empathy about gay love in an era of criminalization—makes the novel all the more powerful.
The Leather Boys is more than a rediscovered classic—it’s a testament to literature’s ability to give voice to the marginalized and to challenge what is deemed acceptable. Freeman’s work paved the way for greater openness in British fiction and remains a moving reminder of how love, in all its forms, persists against fear and repression.
Gillian Freeman’s The Leather Boys is a daring, compassionate masterpiece that feels as raw and relevant today as it did when first published in 1961. Long overlooked and now revived through Dead Ink’s Outsider Classics series, this novel stands as a landmark of queer literature—one that captures working-class life, forbidden love, and quiet rebellion with rare honesty and empathy.
Set in postwar London, Freeman’s story follows Dick and Reggie, two young men bound by a shared love of motorcycles, leather jackets, and the gritty energy of their surroundings. What begins as a friendship forged in escape—Dick from poverty and family duty, Reggie from a suffocating marriage—slowly deepens into something far more intimate. Freeman’s portrayal of their evolving relationship is both subtle and deeply human, capturing the vulnerability and confusion of love discovered in a world that refuses to acknowledge it.
What makes The Leather Boys extraordinary is Freeman’s refusal to sensationalize. Instead, she writes with unflinching realism and compassion, giving voice to characters who, in their time, were largely invisible. Her prose hums with the sounds of London’s streets and pubs, her dialogue sharp and authentic, reflecting the rhythms and struggles of working-class youth. Through Dick and Reggie, Freeman explores themes of masculinity, identity, and belonging—revealing how tenderness can exist even in the harshest corners of society.
It’s also a striking social document. Beneath the intimate love story runs a current of class tension, moral hypocrisy, and the quiet suffocation of postwar conformity. Freeman doesn’t just tell a story of two men in love; she dissects the society that seeks to deny them happiness. That quiet courage—writing with empathy about gay love in an era of criminalization—makes the novel all the more powerful.
The Leather Boys is more than a rediscovered classic—it’s a testament to literature’s ability to give voice to the marginalized and to challenge what is deemed acceptable. Freeman’s work paved the way for greater openness in British fiction and remains a moving reminder of how love, in all its forms, persists against fear and repression.
December 30, 2025
This, in many ways, must be read as a product of its time, place, and biases.
The Leather Boys was a commissioned novel for Anthony Blond Ltd., later published by pulp-prone paperback-only publishers / imprints (Tandem, Star, Corgi, Transworld etc.). Blond, an infamous bisexual, was a rarity. On the one hand he was a part of the old guard, a successful Jewish man operating in a market saturated with successful Jewish men, founding his company in the twilight years of greats like Victor Gollancz and Frederic Warburg, competing with hotshot up-and-comers like Tom Maschler, poached from Penguin by Jonathan Cape. On the other hand Blond was a boundary pusher, a risk-taker, a proudly queer man whose rebellion was backed by the money and talent and knowledge of a long-term publisher. When he commissioned The Leather Boys, Blond took another risk, but it was a calculated one. Here, a novel written by an experienced author, a woman known herself to push boundaries, published by his company, which had the money and the know-how to make a success of a novel about working class queer men.
But Gillian Freeman was also a middle-class woman, and Blond a man who, by this time, was well into the upper echelons of British businessmen, rubbing shoulders with the great and good of London's literati. This is a story which tremendous potential, one which is crying out for a newer, more punchy, adaptation, but it is also a story rife with assumptions, stereotypes, and denial. A queer tale that never names or embraces its queerness, a love story which fails to give us an on-page kiss, or an on-page declaration, which isn't couched in violence, shrouded in round-about description, or distanced by thought and memory. Most pointedly, this is a story about working class boys written, edited and published by people who are not them, and you can tell.
The Leather Boys is not a bad book. It is an important book. A spiritual sibling to My Beautiful Laundrette and Brighton Rock, a queer story which, in a post-Pillion market, has particular appeal. But The Leather Boys is also a piece of history, it is a book with bias, a book which is a product of the minds which crafted it. Read it not as a romance, but as a piece of queer history. 3 stars.
The Leather Boys was a commissioned novel for Anthony Blond Ltd., later published by pulp-prone paperback-only publishers / imprints (Tandem, Star, Corgi, Transworld etc.). Blond, an infamous bisexual, was a rarity. On the one hand he was a part of the old guard, a successful Jewish man operating in a market saturated with successful Jewish men, founding his company in the twilight years of greats like Victor Gollancz and Frederic Warburg, competing with hotshot up-and-comers like Tom Maschler, poached from Penguin by Jonathan Cape. On the other hand Blond was a boundary pusher, a risk-taker, a proudly queer man whose rebellion was backed by the money and talent and knowledge of a long-term publisher. When he commissioned The Leather Boys, Blond took another risk, but it was a calculated one. Here, a novel written by an experienced author, a woman known herself to push boundaries, published by his company, which had the money and the know-how to make a success of a novel about working class queer men.
But Gillian Freeman was also a middle-class woman, and Blond a man who, by this time, was well into the upper echelons of British businessmen, rubbing shoulders with the great and good of London's literati. This is a story which tremendous potential, one which is crying out for a newer, more punchy, adaptation, but it is also a story rife with assumptions, stereotypes, and denial. A queer tale that never names or embraces its queerness, a love story which fails to give us an on-page kiss, or an on-page declaration, which isn't couched in violence, shrouded in round-about description, or distanced by thought and memory. Most pointedly, this is a story about working class boys written, edited and published by people who are not them, and you can tell.
The Leather Boys is not a bad book. It is an important book. A spiritual sibling to My Beautiful Laundrette and Brighton Rock, a queer story which, in a post-Pillion market, has particular appeal. But The Leather Boys is also a piece of history, it is a book with bias, a book which is a product of the minds which crafted it. Read it not as a romance, but as a piece of queer history. 3 stars.
November 17, 2025
The Leather Boys is one of those quietly powerful novels that really gets under your skin. For something written when homosexuality was still illegal, it feels astonishingly compassionate and ahead of its time. Freeman captures the tentative bond between two working-class lads with such warmth and subtlety that it becomes all the more moving for its understatement.
What struck me most was the emotional honesty threaded through the story. There’s no fuss or melodrama, just small, genuine moments that feel completely real: the hesitations, the stolen glances, the shared silences. It’s tender without trying to be, and that makes it hit even harder.
The setting is wonderfully vivid. Post-war London (all cafés, motorbikes, and the quiet pressure of everyday life) gives the novel a strong sense of place. Freeman’s exploration of class, masculinity and expectation sits so naturally within the narrative that it enriches the story without ever overwhelming it.
Altogether, it’s a beautifully understated and quietly groundbreaking bit of queer fiction. Thoughtful, tender, and surprisingly timeless. I’m genuinely glad I read it.
What struck me most was the emotional honesty threaded through the story. There’s no fuss or melodrama, just small, genuine moments that feel completely real: the hesitations, the stolen glances, the shared silences. It’s tender without trying to be, and that makes it hit even harder.
The setting is wonderfully vivid. Post-war London (all cafés, motorbikes, and the quiet pressure of everyday life) gives the novel a strong sense of place. Freeman’s exploration of class, masculinity and expectation sits so naturally within the narrative that it enriches the story without ever overwhelming it.
Altogether, it’s a beautifully understated and quietly groundbreaking bit of queer fiction. Thoughtful, tender, and surprisingly timeless. I’m genuinely glad I read it.
November 13, 2025
Thanks NetGalley and Dead Ink Books for my advanced reader copy!
Originally published in the ‘50s between the Wolfenden Report that sought to decriminalise homosexuality and the act that did decriminalise it, The Leather Boys is a distinct and important voice that touches history and that inspired several films. With its memorable characters and clear-cut storytelling, I just loved this novel! We meet Dick as he moves in with his Grandma, eager to escape the confines of his family home and eager to explore more of his personal identity, namely through expensive clothing. Then, Reggie, who is unhappily married to his wife at too young an age. Dick and Reggie are our imperfect protagonists… and incredibly lovable ones too. Both part of a wider gang of lads in London, their friendship is beautiful, blossoming into something tender, unknown, untouched, which is really special to witness.
The book is full of realistic London vignettes and great characters. I really loved Dick's Granny, who lent some comedic relief and a real sense of humanity. And, my goodness, this book is a page-turner from start to finish with an ending that really stayed with me.
Originally published in the ‘50s between the Wolfenden Report that sought to decriminalise homosexuality and the act that did decriminalise it, The Leather Boys is a distinct and important voice that touches history and that inspired several films. With its memorable characters and clear-cut storytelling, I just loved this novel! We meet Dick as he moves in with his Grandma, eager to escape the confines of his family home and eager to explore more of his personal identity, namely through expensive clothing. Then, Reggie, who is unhappily married to his wife at too young an age. Dick and Reggie are our imperfect protagonists… and incredibly lovable ones too. Both part of a wider gang of lads in London, their friendship is beautiful, blossoming into something tender, unknown, untouched, which is really special to witness.
The book is full of realistic London vignettes and great characters. I really loved Dick's Granny, who lent some comedic relief and a real sense of humanity. And, my goodness, this book is a page-turner from start to finish with an ending that really stayed with me.
November 4, 2025
Gillian Freeman's 1961 story of two young, working-class men who are part of a motorcycle gang that end up falling for each other feels very much of the kitchen-sink-drama style of the time.
Reggie and Dick are only 18 but Reg is already in an unhappy marriage. Dick is pushing at the confines of his family while also unemployed. Both are seeking escape, which they find in the motorcycle gang run from the local café and ultimately in each other. The relationship between the two is never treated with sensationalism; instead, it's rather touching and sweet, but it's certainly not sentimental (and ultimately tragic to fit the kitchen-sink trope).
It's a short tale that is easy enough to read and likely should be read for all those interested in landmark queer fiction.
Thanks to NetGalley and Dead Ink Books for the ARC.
Reggie and Dick are only 18 but Reg is already in an unhappy marriage. Dick is pushing at the confines of his family while also unemployed. Both are seeking escape, which they find in the motorcycle gang run from the local café and ultimately in each other. The relationship between the two is never treated with sensationalism; instead, it's rather touching and sweet, but it's certainly not sentimental (and ultimately tragic to fit the kitchen-sink trope).
It's a short tale that is easy enough to read and likely should be read for all those interested in landmark queer fiction.
Thanks to NetGalley and Dead Ink Books for the ARC.
December 13, 2025
Absolutely fascinating that this book exists. There’s some moments of genuinely really lovely and tender intimacy.
Its slightly more The Outsiders than Pillion, it really doubles down on the 60s british social realism of it all which is powerful but does mean a lot of this story is just miserable. Maybe this is the antidote to Reform “good ol days” retoric of British history? A geuine artifact that says “the time your grandparents gree up in sucked!”
That said, very readable and I’m glad this is getting another life.
Its slightly more The Outsiders than Pillion, it really doubles down on the 60s british social realism of it all which is powerful but does mean a lot of this story is just miserable. Maybe this is the antidote to Reform “good ol days” retoric of British history? A geuine artifact that says “the time your grandparents gree up in sucked!”
That said, very readable and I’m glad this is getting another life.
December 18, 2025
Such a beautiful book, filled with the normality of the situation which is queer love in a society where it is made illegal for reasons of fear, and misunderstanding. I love that this book does not play into making the situation complex to help people understand why it may happen, for example opposing classes between the lovers, just two working class men feeling something which can only unequivocally be called love.
Also super interesting that Gillian as a heterosexual woman wrote this, I'd love to know more about her story/ what experiences she had with the queer London community
Also super interesting that Gillian as a heterosexual woman wrote this, I'd love to know more about her story/ what experiences she had with the queer London community
November 13, 2025
3.5 methinks
December 9, 2025
Fun in a The Outsiders kind of way.
November 15, 2025
Galley provided by publisher
I picked up The Leather Boys to read on a whim, mostly because I'm always interested in reading recovered classic literature, books that might not have survived as classics in the same way as bigger names did, but ones that are latterly revived and given a new life. It was, then, inevitable that this one would catch my eye. Telling the story of two working class boys who fall in love, The Leather Boys was a book I enjoyed reading on the whole. It's one of those books where I defend a 3 star rating as good, since it means I liked it overall. I didn't love it, because I find I'm increasingly stingy in my higher ratings (except, apparently, everything I've read so far in November, but this is an outlier month), but I enjoyed the experience of reading it. Hence, this is a classic that I'd recommend, especially if you find yourself wanting something outside of the usual canon.
I picked up The Leather Boys to read on a whim, mostly because I'm always interested in reading recovered classic literature, books that might not have survived as classics in the same way as bigger names did, but ones that are latterly revived and given a new life. It was, then, inevitable that this one would catch my eye. Telling the story of two working class boys who fall in love, The Leather Boys was a book I enjoyed reading on the whole. It's one of those books where I defend a 3 star rating as good, since it means I liked it overall. I didn't love it, because I find I'm increasingly stingy in my higher ratings (except, apparently, everything I've read so far in November, but this is an outlier month), but I enjoyed the experience of reading it. Hence, this is a classic that I'd recommend, especially if you find yourself wanting something outside of the usual canon.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews