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

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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.

Comparing British memory of the war with that of other countries, Turner asks why British soldiers are not remembered alongside Japanese and German men as potential perpetrators of sexual violence, despite evidence of these crimes during the Allied occupation of Germany and postwar colonial uprisings. With Turing, what began in the 1970s as activist attempts to reclaim queer figures in British history has, in recent years, been taken over by governmental use of his image in sanitised attempts to address historical wrongdoings against queer people. The title to be read and discussed is sign-posted and on sale for the whole of the previous month (with a discount for those who make it known they intend to come) and everybody is welcome, whether first-timer, part-timer or regular-timer.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. He spent hours watching Sunday war films, poring over stories of derring-do and relishing in birthday trips to air museums. More immediately, I was aware that the allure these characters had for many of the men in my life was due to the fact that they weren’t allowed to transgress the bounds of heterosexuality.

The army which fought for the Allies was largely composed of conscripts who were not necessarily respectful of military mores and martial manners. Was left with a strong desire to seek out more history books that come at their subject with an unconventional angle as some of the uncovered material humanises and brings to life its subjects in a really startling way.Notice to Internet Explorer users Server security: Please note Internet Explorer users with versions 9 and 10 now need to enable TLS 1.

Was also gratified to discover that the contents of Men at War were as amusing, thought provoking and imaginative as the event. My fascination with uncontroversial classics – The Great Escape, Band of Brothers, Master and Commander – began to feel illicit, itchy, for reasons that seemed far less noble than my emerging anti-war politics. An intensely personal examination of manliness and sexuality in WW2 by a man who comes clean about his lingering Airfix habit. Engaging, with remarkable insights into aspects of WWII which I hadn't seen explored in print before.And hooray to Luke Turner for producing a thought provoking and entertaining alternative to the Airfix model rendition of men at war. I have to admit I'm a fan of this style of social history and the unapologetic rewriting of History with a capitol H.

It’s this apparent contradiction that drives Men at War, a part-memoir, part-historical exploration of British Second World War masculinity. When he moves on to recounting the lives of some of the men fighting in the War, often relating to their sexuality, the book is more interesting, but actually there isn't that much of this and its a rather small cast of characters. But 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. 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. Despite the richness of British masculinity studies and the pervasiveness of queer First World War poetry in British school curricula, Emma Vickers’ 2013 Queen and Country: Same-Sex Desire in the British Armed Forces, 1939-45 remains one of the few academic monographs to consider queer men not just as a given in British histories of war, but as a distinct culture enabled by wartime mobilisation.I stayed up late rewinding a brief, tender conversation between two sailors, furtive and embarrassed as though I were watching porn. There was far too much about the author's interests in the Second World War as a hobbyist, which really wasn't very interesting. Insightful and affecting account of the people whose lives and love lives have been forgotten since World War 2 - to the detriment of them and to us.