Dirk Bogarde Actor was told he could be a KGB target

The film star Dirk Bogarde was "clearly disturbed" and "troubled" after MI5 warned him that his name had been given to the KGB as a "practising homosexual" and he risked being compromised in a sting operation, newly declassified intelligence files show.

- Caroline Davies

Bogarde, who died in 1999 and never came out publicly but lived with his life partner and manager, Anthony Forwood, was told by security services that his name was on a list of "six practising British homosexuals" given to the Russians by an unnamed source who had himself been sexually compromised during a visit to Moscow in the late 1950s.

Separately, a KGB defector codenamed Kago had informed MI5 that a young British actor, who appeared in a film with a name like "the kingdom of something" was the subject of a Russian recruitment attempt in Moscow in 1958-59.