If illegitimacy was a stigma in wartime then homosexuality remained the 'love that could not speak its name' as Terry Gardener found in the Navy. Homosexual relations between men were illegal and although Terry found many willing partners on board an all male ship, Terry's confusion about his sexual identity made him so depressed that he contemplated suicide and sought the help of a psychiatrist. He was arrested and discharged from his duties. He was not alone: 324 men were court martialled for acts of indecent behaviour and discharged – or even imprisoned.

But there was one taboo that overshadowed all others in wartime: sleeping with the enemy. After the victory at El Alamein in the Western Desert in November 1942, Italian and later German POWs started to arrive in Britain in large numbers. So many young British men had volunteered for the forces or better paid war work that there was an acute shortage of farm workers during the war and so POWs were employed to help with the production of food on British farms.

Laura Clark (later Forst) fell in love with a handsome, blond German POW and began a passionate and illicit affair. Laura bore a son – Willi’s child – but kept the affair secret from her husband. But after the way, unable to bear the thought of separation, she confessed and fled to be with her lover.

The Channel Islands were the only part of British territory to be occupied in the Second World War and young Channel Islanders grew up with the day-to-day presence of German soldiers. Dolly Edwards was very taken with one of them and soon they had decided to 'marry' privately in a deserted chapel in Guernsey and consummate their 'marriage' on the steps of the church. After the Germans withdrew in May 1945, Dolly (who by now had a baby son) faced all the opprobrium reserved for collaborators.

Many of the compelling and moving stories had happy endings: Dolly Joanknecht and Laura Forst both overcame prejudice and married their German POWs, lived long and happy married lives. Doris Potter was reunited with the daughter she had given up for adoption.

Others were less fortunate: Phyllis Roller married another Canadian, a father for Christine, but never fell for him the way she had the errant Ken; Ruby Haslam had a breakdown after leaving her husband and it was some years before she was able to rebuild her life as a single parent – and become an agony aunt on a national newspaper in the 1960s.

But whatever the outcome there is a single thread the binds the varied and disparate narratives of Sex, Love And War - the intensity of the experiences of these wartime years, passions recalled undimmed more than half a century later, hurt and rejection still as searing.

The openness of the frank disclosures by men and women, now grown old, about these extraordinary times when they were prepared to flout all conventions to claim love in a world gone mad, further rewrites our understanding of life on the Home Front in Britain between 1939 and 1945.