When war broke out in 1939, Joan was a 16-year old convent-educated schoolgirl living in bohemian Chelsea. For her, war was a question of 'not knowing which you were going to lose first: your virginity or your life?'

It wasn't long before she lost the former, but fortunately she survived the war and is now a woman in her late 70s who still recalls her wartime adventures in such full and explicit detail that you have to remind yourself her frantic sexual escapades took place long before the sexual revolution of the 1960s. By and large, Victorian attitudes still dominated.

But the demands of war were to change everything. By March 1945 there were over four and a half million men living in the macho environments of barracks, camps, ships or airfields. Men like Larry Golding lied about his age to get into the navy - and found his uniform was a great lure for the attractive girls he met while on shore leave.

By the end of the war, nearly half a million women were in the auxiliary services and hundreds and thousands were working in factories or doing other war work. Often lonely and homesick, they were ripe for romance.

Wartime conditions contrived to encourage an easygoing sexual morality. The Blackout permitted secret trysts and assignations. And by 1940 the drive for salvage meant all iron gates and railings had been removed to make munitions. So public parks and squares, usually locked as dusk fell, became like 'giant double beds'.