The Real Life “English Patient” Was Gay

Newly discovered letters have revealed that Lazlo de Almasy, the Hungarian soldier who inspired the Best Picture Oscar-winning romance/drama The English Patient, was gay in real life. He never slept with a woman and he was in love with a Nazi.

Letters have surfaced in Germany proving that the World War Two spy who inspired the hero the the Oscar-winning film The English Patient was no womaniser but a gay man in love with a young soldier called Hans Entholt. The correspondence also indicate the Hungarian-born adventurer Count Laszlo de Almásy did not die of a morphine overdose after suffering terrible burns and dreaming of the woman he loved, the fate the befell the fictional hero played by Ralph Fiennes in the film. Instead Almásy succumbed to amoebic dysentry in 1951 never having once slept with a woman. While the Imperial War Museum in London holds reports he wrote for German intelligence in WW2 under lock and key, letters written by Almásy, who worked for Rommel’s Afrika Corps, have been found in Germany, confirming the long-time rumours about his sexuality.

Almasy’s lover Hans died when he stepped on a German land mine.