Gillian Freeman: groundbreaking novelist who explored taboo themes

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Gillian Freeman’s richly detailed historical novels chronicled free spirits both in the Edwardian era and Nazi Germany. Marketed as a British take on the Marlon Brando film The Wild One, Freeman’s novel featured shoplifting and theft, a preponderance of black leather jackets, a failed marriage and a male friendship that develops into a sexual relationship. Freeman went on to survey the state of modern pornography in The Undergrowth of Literature, which drew from magazines like Woman’s Own and Man’s Story to examine “the particular fantasies people need to get through life”, her husband said. And she wrote two major novels set in Nazi Germany, including The Alabaster Egg, about a Jewish woman’s tragic romance, and Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg, 1933-1948, which originally omitted Freeman’s name from the cover.