Gillian Freeman

Born to Jewish parents, Dr Jack Freeman, a dentist who had been a physician, and his wife Freda (née Davids) in North London,[2] she attended Francis Holland School in London and Lynton House school in Maidenhead during the Second World War.[3] She graduated in English and philosophy from the University of Reading in 1951.[4] She then taught at a school in the East End and worked as a copywriter and a newspaper reporter.[4]

The Liberty Man (1955) was Freeman's first book, written while working as a literary secretary to the novelist Louis Golding; it was about a love affair between a schoolteacher and a sailor doomed by the class system.[4][5] Freeman's time with Golding was said to have inspired some of her later works.[6]

One of her best known books was the novel The Leather Boys (1961), published under the pseudonym Eliot George, after the novelist George Eliot, a story of a gay relationship between two young working-class men, one married and the other a biker,[5] which was 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, her literary agent,[4] who wanted a story about a "Romeo and Romeo in the South London suburbs".[7][8] Her non-fiction book The Undergrowth of Literature (1967), was a pioneering study of pornography.[4][9]

The Alabaster Egg (1970) is a tragic romance about a Jewish woman set in Nazi Germany.[4] In 1978, 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 assumed it was genuine;[10] it was included in a 2004 anthology of war diaries.[4][11]

In addition to novels, Freeman wrote screenplays including That Cold Day in the Park, a 1969 film directed by Robert Altman, the scenarios for two ballets by Kenneth MacMillan, Isadora and Mayerling,[5] and with her husband, Ballet Genius (1988), portraits of 20 outstanding ballet dancers.[4] Her final book was But Nobody Lives in Bloomsbury (2006), a fictional study of the Bloomsbury Group.[12]

Freeman married Edward Thorpe, a novelist and the ballet critic of the Evening Standard, in 1955.[13] The couple had two daughters, the actresses Harriet Thorpe and Matilda Thorpe.[4]

She died on 23 February 2019 from complications of dementia.[4][5]

• The Liberty Man, 1955
• Fall of Innocence, 1956
• Jack Would be a Gentleman, 1959
• The Story of Albert Einstein, 1960
• The Leather Boys, 1961
• The Campaign, 1963
• The Leather Boys (screenplay), 1964
• Only Lovers Left Alive (screenplay), 1965
• The Leader, 1965
• The Undergrowth of Literature, 1967
• That Cold Day in the Park (screenplay), 1969
• An Evasion of Women (short play, alongside pieces by Shena Mackay, Margaret Drabble, and Maureen Duffy), 1969[14]
• The Alabaster Egg, 1970
• I Want What I Want (screenplay), 1972
• The Marriage Machine, 1975
• The Schoolgirl Ethic: The Life and Work of Angela Brazil, 1976
• Mayerling (ballet scenario), 1978[15]
• Intimate Letters (ballet scenario), 1978[16]
• Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1938–48, 1979
• An Easter Egg Hunt, 1981
• Isadora (ballet scenario), 1981[17]
• Lovechild, 1984
• Life Before Man, 1986
• Ballet Genius: Twenty Great Dancers of the Twentieth Century (with Edward Thorpe), 1988
• Termination Rock, 1989
• His Mistress's Voice, 2000
• But Nobody Lives in Bloomsbury, 2006

• Listing of Gillian Freeman archives at Reading University Library