However, welcome to Dan Snow's history. I've interviewed so many veterans of the first

and second world war, but being a prude, being British. I never really talked to them

about one element of the war that actually looms very large if you had the contemporary

accounts that Diaries take them at the time. And that is sex, that is sexuality, love,

lust. Some of them mention it in passing, they tell me things about Cairo, they give

you fascinating little glimpses, descriptions when it seemed like there was a time when

things loosened up a little. You could be yourself, you could explore your sexuality

and other peoples. One account written just after the war of a soldier serving the

faries, he talks about little else other than the people he was able to sleep with. And

the last chapter of that book hit a particularly fertile time because he was on a ship full

of civilians and soldiers heading for demobilization on a long, hot passage all the way from

Asia round to Britain. My goodness, that chapter, the parental advisory warning.

But the issue of love and lust, sex, sexuality is such an important one in the Second World

War. And Luke Turner is a historian who's been working on this. He's just written a book

called Men at War, loving, lasting, fighting, remembering. He's assembled a cast of extraordinary

characters from a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp who later became an LGBT plus activist

to an ace trans RAF fighter. And he's really shined a light on this period, helping to rescue

history, I think, before much of it is lost forever. This is the beginning of Pride Month

here in Britain. So this is the perfect timing for this conversation. Enjoy.

The cool, blue, black, white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to

war with one another again. And look off and the subtle has cleared the power.

Luke, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me on.

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