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.

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This book is full of stories that intriguingly, lustfully and hilariously complicates Britain's cosy and homogenous national myth about how people in that era acted, thought and felt. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

And hooray to Luke Turner for producing a thought provoking and entertaining alternative to the Airfix model rendition of men at war.For a queer kid growing up under Section 28 and a new wave of Second World War mythologisation, history was a fraught country for self-exploration. As someone who usually focusses on tales of WWI, and who finds WWII a little off-putting (in that main due to the reasons stated above) this book allowed me a whole new entry point to the period - one that isn't uncomfortable.