May 27, 2004
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English Patient was 'ugly, gay' Nazi spy
By Michael Smith and Peter Day
(Filed: 21/05/2004)
The true story of Count Laszlo Almasy, the Hungarian explorer and hero of the film The English Patient, is told in MI5 files released to the National Archives today.
In the film, Almasy, played by Ralph Fiennes, is a disfigured patient in an Italian hospital who had been the handsome young lover of an Englishwoman (Kristin Scott Thomas) in pre-war Cairo.
The truth is more prosaic. Although Almasy was a Hungarian explorer and airman who mapped the Libyan and Egyptian deserts and was prominent in pre-war Cairo society, he was no hero.
He was a bungling Nazi intelligence officer who, according to his MI5 file, was "very ugly and shabbily dressed, with a fat and pendulous nose, drooping shoulders and a nervous tic".
The image of the romantic hero portrayed in the film will be further damaged next week when a new book, The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy, reveals that he was also homosexual ...
Comments (1)
yeah, but it is a fantastic novel.
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