The night Sir John was arrested

At around eleven o'clock on the night of 20 October 1953, John Gielgud entered a public toilet in the London district of Chelsea. There he glanced at a man. The man was a plain-clothes policeman. A few minutes later, the most celebrated Shakespearean actor of his generation was arrested – only months after the young Queen had knighted him.

At the police station he gave his name as Arthur Gielgud, clerk. The next morning he appeared before a court in West London, pleaded guilty and paid a ten-pound fine. He was charged with persistently importuning for immoral purposes. A reporter in the courtroom recognised his unmistakable voice. The following day, the newspaper reported the case.

The arrest was part of a targeted campaign of persecution. Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe had called on the police to wage a crusade against "male vice". A special Scotland Yard unit had been watching public toilets in central London since the thirties. As a result, hundreds of men appeared in court every year.

Gielgud feared his career was over. He was rehearsing the new play "A Day by the Sea" and wanted to give up. But at his performance in Liverpool something unexpected happened: the audience rose and applauded. Backstage, his fellow actor Sybil Thorndike had taken him by the arm and pulled him along. "Come on, John darling, they won't boo me."

Gielgud never spoke publicly about that evening. Months later he suffered a nervous breakdown. For more than a decade he stayed away from Hollywood, fearing he would be refused entry because of his conviction. Only in 1988 did he mention his partner Martin Hensler by name in public.

The case also had political consequences. It was one of a series of prosecutions of prominent men that increasingly put the ban itself at the centre of public debate. The following summer, the government set up a committee whose report became known in 1957 as the Wolfenden Report. It recommended decriminalising consensual homosexual acts between adult men in private.