As a child, Luke Turner was obsessed with the Second World War. He spent hours watching Sunday war films, poring over stories of derring-do and relishing in birthday trips to air museums. Lying in bed beneath Airfix fighter planes suspended from his ceiling, he would think about the men that might sit in their cockpits, and whether he could ever be one of them. Now, as an adult who has come to terms with a masculine identity and sexuality that is often erased from dominant military narratives, he undertakes a refreshingly honest analysis of his fascination with the war.

In Men at War, Turner looks beyond the increasingly retrogressive and jingoistic ideal of a Britain that never was to recognise men of war as creatures of love, fear, hope and desire. From writers, filmmakers, artists and ordinary men - including those in his own family - Turner assembles a broad cast of characters to bring the war to life. There are conscientious objectors, a bisexual Commando, a pacifist poet who flew for Bomber Command, a transgender RAF pilot, a soldier who suffered in Japanese POW camps and later in life became an LGBT+ activist, and those who simply did what they could just to survive and return home to a complicated peace.

As the conflict moves beyond living memory and the last veterans leave us, we are in danger of missing the opportunity to gain a true understanding of this rich history. By exploring a wartime experience that embraces sex, lust and the body as much as tactics and weaponry, Turner argues that the only way we can really understand the Second World War is to get to grips with the complexity of the lives and identities of those who fought and endured it.

"Beautiful . . . Luke Turner's tender account of servicemen's transgressive private lives, transforms our understanding of the Second World War . . . The mix of memoir, encounters with veterans and historical research is engaging and surprising. It is difficult to encapsulate the tender, forthright sensibility of Men at War; it is a loving, important work" - NEW STATESMAN

"This tribute to the outliers and oddballs of the Second World War is a reminder that, in the very best of ways, not all men are created equal" - THE TIMES

"Armed with the knowledge of a war aficionado, Turner cements his seat at the table alongside those who might resist his queer narrative of World War II. By liberating these men of their wartime closet, Turner is also attempting to free the war and its effect on Britain from the revisionist clutches of a growing nationalist right-wing political agenda" - THE i PAPER

"[A] vibrant book . . . By turns eye-opening and moving, this is a refreshing attempt to look again at the war's social and cultural legacy" - HISTORY REVEALED

"Turner's book reclaims these witnesses from the shadows, rescues them from abandonment. He refuses their dismissal from memory and offers their testimonies as evidence that many were true innocents abroad. He asks us simply to remember them." - THE NATIONAL

"Nuanced and thought-provoking . . . As the war recedes, its public memory is inevitably simplified: this book makes the case that only by becoming more varied and capacious can it remain relevant" - BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE

"A brave and honest writer . . . if we want to understand our past whilst embracing the Britain of today with all its latent vibrancy and rich socio-cultural promise, we should read and reflect on Turner's book" - LOUDER THAN WAR

"The real strength of the book is in how it demonstrates the power of desire as a driving force: in intellectual curiosity, national myth-making and in writing history. Men at War is a commendably vulnerable argument for desire as unapologetic historical methodology. As the Second World War recedes from living memory, critical reflections like this - about what we do with our inheritance, both the one we are given and the one we choose - stand to become all the more important" - HISTORY TODAY

"Turner provides an original, distinctive and extremely human insight into the war" - BUZZ MAGAZINE

"From the opening page of this fascinating book I was captivated... It's written with a transparency and forthrightness that I found compelling and humbling... [a] brave book." - METHODIST RECORDER

"The storytelling is beautiful, the research present but not intrusive: this book takes a familiar story of war and personalises it in new, sensitive ways" - BRISTOL LIFE

"A dynamic and engaging account" - THE CRITIC