Author Description

From the construction of the Berlin Wall through every conflict up to the Falklands War, photographer Don McCullin has left a trail of iconic images. At the Sunday Times Magazine in the 1960s, McCullin’s photography made him a new kind of hero. The flow of stories every Sunday took a generation of readers beyond the insularity of postwar Britain and into the recesses of domestic deprivation: when in 1968, a year of political turmoil, the Beatles wanted new pictures, they insisted on using McCullin; when Francis Bacon, whose own career had emerged with depiction of the ravages of the flesh, wanted a portrait, he turned to McCullin. McCullin now spends his days quietly in a Somerset village, where he photographs the landscape and arranges still lifes - a far cry from the world’s conflict zones and the war-scarred North London of Holloway Road, where his career began. In October 2015 it will be 25 years since the first publication of his autobiography, Unreasonable Behaviour - a harrowing memoir combining his photojournalism with his lifework. The time is right to complete McCullin’s story.