Men at War
Loving, Lusting, Fighting, Remembering 1939-1945

Quotes

So original and surprising I am all but speechless with admiration

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

Profound, moving and complex, Men at War is a powerful reflection on trauma and love, on humanity in adversity

An intensely personal examination of manliness and sexuality in WW2 by a man who comes clean about his lingering Airfix habit. Turner fearlessly interrogates the war-obsession of 1970s boyhoods and unearths some extraordinary testimonies and stories from the frontlines. This is lovely, tender, subversive stuff

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 bracingly compassionate, unapologetically sensual and profoundly personal reclamation of a part of our national heritage that is all too often hijacked. Turner was obviously born to write this book

[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

Turner explores the quiet and sometimes unheralded heroism of men who resist our existing conceptions of martial valour, and in doing so, seeks to understand his interest in a war in which he did not take part, yet was shaped by in ways that are unexpectedly touching