Unreasonable Behaviour: An Autobiography

by Don Mc Cullin (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $3.90

  This is the autobiography of the war photographer, Don McCullin, a life shaped by and committed to recording wars and revolutions. From the opening when McCullin recounts his feelings as an underprivileged child separated from his family during three wartime evacuations, through to the final irony of being fired by his editor, he has written a personal portrait of the post-war world. His reputation was established with The Sunday Times assignments in Vietnam, Biafra, Cambodia, Afghanistan and other places and in part this book is a tribute to colleagues sadly lost. He has continued to work as a photographer undertaking lifestyle assignments for magazines and colour supplements although his bitterness and resentment against the British authorities over his inability to gain a place with the Falklands Task Force underlines the emptiness of life away from the frontline.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1990

  $3.29

  Don McCullin's war photographs - taken over 30 years under fire in Cyprus, with the Israelis, in Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia and Lebanon - are a harrowing testimony of man's inhumanity to man. Though they have appeared in the world's leading newspapers and more than one bestselling book, not until now have we heard at first hand the extraordinary story of his life. Vulnerable, rebellious, defensive, shy but passionate about his craft and the English countryside, he gives us the full fury of his resentment at the deprivation of his childhood. He is no less sparing of our emotions when writing about those he sees suffering even more than himself. During Hitler's war he was evacuated but returned to grinding poverty in London to finish his toughening and growing up, stealing coal to keep his father warm when he was dying. The gang warfare of his youth bred in him a suicidal courage that again and again would have earned him medals as a serving soldier. His struggle to come to terms with the sophistication of Fleet Street was as bewildering to him as photographing starving children in the Congo one day and sitting down to a full table with his own family the next.

• New

  Paperback
  2002

  $14.01

  'He has known all forms of fear, he's an expert in it. He has come back from God knows how many brinks, all different. His experience in a Ugandan prison alone would be enough to unhinge another man - like myself, as a matter of fact - for good. He has been forfeit more times than he can remember, he says. But he is not bragging. Talking this way about death and risk, he seems to be implying quite consciously that by testing his luck each time, he is testing his Maker's indulgence' - John le Carre 'McCullin is required reading if you want to know what real journalism is all about' - The Times 'From the opening...there is hardly a dull sentence: his prose is so lively and uninhibited...An excellent book' - Sunday Telegraph 'Unsparing reminiscences that effectively combine the bittersweet life of a world-class photojournalist with a generous selection of his haunting lifework...A genuinely affecting memoir that reckons the cost and loss involved in making one's way on the cutting edge of conflict' - Kirkus Reviews 'If this was just a book of McCullin's war photographs it would be valuable enough. But it is much more' - Sunday Correspondent