The real English Patient hero was gay, not a womanizer

Africa Leader
Tuesday 6th April, 2010  
The real life Second World War spy, whose story inspired the Oscar winning film 'The English Patient', which portrayed him as a womanizer, was actually gay, according to new found letters in Germany.

Hungarian-born adventurer Count Laszlo de Alm
ásy, whose struggles are depicted in the 1996 film, was apparently in a relationship with a Nazi soldier called Hans Entholt.

The Heinrich Barth Institute for African Studies in Cologne claimed it has discovered love letters written by Alm
ásy.

A member of the institute's staff revealed that the letters hinted that Alm
ásy had several homosexual relationships.

"Egyptian princes were among Alm
ásy's lovers," the Telegraph quoted the staff as telling Germany's Der Spiegel magazine.

The correspondences also suggest that Alm
ásy died of amoebic dysentery in 1951 and not of a morphine overdose, as believed until now.

Meanwhile, Entholt, an officer in the Wehrmacht, had died during Rommel's retreat from Africa after stepping on one of his own side's landmines.

In the film, Alm
ásy, played by Ralph Fiennes, is portrayed as the lover of an Englishwoman in pre-war Cairo.

Almasy worked for German intelligence and helped Nazi agents cross the Sahara desert as part of his missions for the Brandenburg Division, a unit of German foreign military intelligence.