The Longton Telegraph reports that Sir John Gielgud’s letters to his lover reveal his fear of being exposed as gay. Newly revealed letters show that an American blackmailer threatened to ruin the actor by exposing his homosexuality. ‘Gielgud, one of the greatest British actors of the 20th century but a deeply private man, became convinced that ‘nameless people’ were determined to destroy him. Friends were so worried that he might be attacked that they tried to persuade him to hire a bodyguard. The double life that the actor was forced to live and his ‘wretched despair’ at the possibility of being exposed are revealed in a collection of 250 letters that Gielgud wrote to the interior designer Paul Anstee, his lover for much of the 1950s,’ the Telegraph reported. Anstee, who is now very frail, remained a friend of Gielgud until the actor’s death in 2000 at the age of 96.