Let's Talk Books

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.