BUREAU OF LOST CULTURE – Sex-Men-War (28/03/2026)

Behind the official myth, of the Second World War with its maps and medals, its rhetoric of courage and sacrifice — there another hidden narrative. Written in letters and diaries never meant to be read by us, in gestures and code that could not be named at the time, a kind of underground culture that was secret, transgressive, forbidden

With millions of young men and women on military service, the transitory nature of life under threat of sudden and violent death created a charged atmosphere in which conventional boundaries loosened. In London the darkness of the blackout became both cover and catalyst.

Writer Luke Turner, is the author of Men at War, a book that excavates the sexual undercurrents of wartime Britain. He examines how the social upheaval of wartime had a profound effect on the sex lives of British men in particular,— in the city, in barracks, in prison of war camps. This is a history that feels less like a battlefield and more like an underground scene — improvised, usually invisible – and later to be deliberately repressed.