Men at war

As a child, Luke Turner was obsessed with the Second World War. He spent hours painstakingly constructing models of his favourite aircraft, watching Sunday afternoon war films, pouring over stories of derring-do and relishing in birthday trips to air museums. Lying in bed beneath Airfix bombers and fighter planes suspended from his bedroom ceiling, he would often 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 this book, Turner looks beyond the increasingly retrogressive and jingoistic ideal of a Britain that never was to discover a much richer history.