Customer Reviews

Unreasonable Behaviour: An Autobiography

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This book is more than just a description of one man's life. As one wades through chapter after chapter of Don McCullin's thoughts and reflections, it's plain to see that he is a fighter. From a harsh upbringing in wartime London, to his constant struggle to bring images of conflict and misery into the public eye and his resultant battle against the ghosts of his death-stained past, a theme of conflict courses through the pages of this book like hot blood from a unstaunched bullet wound.

Unlike John Simpson's hedonistic autobiography of his life hopping between the earth's hotspots, "Strange Places, Questionable People", McCullin dashes past the glorifying clichés of foreign correspondence and portrays the harsh reality of a life under constant pressure, whether it be the initial social stigma of being of an inferior class within the media sector, the fear experienced as incoming artillery comes whistling towards him, or being locked up in a foreign prison, where death lurks around every corner.

This is McCullin's way of exorcising the demons of a life filled with frightful images that most of us merely glance at from time to time, and acknowledges this in the final chapter. Although McCullin does not delve as deep into the psyche as Anthony Loyd's memoir "My War Gone By, I Miss It So", this book rates as being one of the most sincere accounts of life on the front-line as I have experienced.

I came back to Don McCullin after accidentally coming across a collection of his photos many years ago. A photgraph he took of a starving albino Biafran boy had seared its self into my memory, though at the time I was too wrapped up in my college reading requirements to fully explore his work and autobiography. So five years later, while I couldn't remember McCullin's name, the power of that one picture egged me on until I finally, after digging through the university library's photo section for a few hours, found his books again.

The autobiography is amazing because of the incredible story and insanity of McCullin's career. It is all the more extraordinary because of the direct potency of the writing coming from a man who has suffered from dyslexia and generally avoided books. With this work McCullin shows the humanity of war and the morbid destruction thrust upon a people; the surreal insanity that must infect those living with and creating death.

With yet another large scale war impending this book is an illustration of the basic humanity that too often gets lost in politics.