Morose and hunky photographer who is compulsively attracted to gun battles and death and was once hit with a shell in both legs. Non-violent, courageous and honourable man who has worked from war-torn Africa to Vietnam armed only with a camera.

Dyslexic, tanned and sinewy co-author of Unreasonable Behaviour. Complex and contradictory character who is exhibiting at the Royal Photographic Society in Bath from 29 June.

Such is the image of Don McCullin, 56 – the John Wayne of Somerset. He’s wearing Docksiders, a lumberjack-style flannel shirt and hair that hits his collar. ‘I wear clothes that are convenient,’ he says, in a hesitant way. ‘I like rolling my sleeves up.’

The strange thing is that he has too many of certain items. ‘Like upstairs I have 60 pairs of new socks. I can’t bring myself to wear them, to take them out of their pristine wrappers.’ As a child, he wore secondhand clothes.

He’s also very neat and tidy – curiously, one of the things he’d like to be remembered for is his presentation – and as we talk, it feels as if he organises things in an attempt to order his inner chaos. (‘Yes,’ he says later, ‘I’m in permanent turmoil.’) ‘It’s to do with lack of confidence, I suppose. And I’m just trying to make up for things I didn’t have when I was a boy. We didn’t have a bath and we shared a loo.’ He is soft, unassuming and modestly spoken. He has the face of a rugged model, kindly with shaggy eyebrows and piercing blue eyes that are sad. ‘Mournful eyes?’ He laughs, and crosses his arms that end in workmanlike hands. ‘They’re what God gave me.’ His is a face that often has trouble at Customs; and in Africa they accused him of being a mercenary. ‘I often think I’m punished for other people’s misdemeanours,’ he has said.

‘I’m not what you’d call good-looking, not the kind of person to attract a second glance in the street. But I do suffer from vanity – and I’m always checking myself out.’

He’s not, he says, any kind of sexual thing. ‘Obviously, one knows one isn’t a sex symbol. I’m sure my appeal as a man is because of my occupation. It’s nothing to do with the way I look. I’ve known lots of beautiful girls – and they’ve all been interested in my work, not me. That’s what I think, anyway.’

He is, he says, yer average 5ft 10 man. ‘But people often think I look surly and don’t want to argue the toss with me . . . I have this strong feeling of confrontation in my make-up. I won’t run away from an argument and I won’t run away from fear.’

Why? His was a savage and underprivileged childhood – his father, an invalid, died when he was young; he was evacuated to violent homes; and he was tormented and bullied by schoolmasters and boys tougher than he. Fear, he says, has been his companion over the last 25 years, and there is a tremendous strain of adventure in him.

He’s overwhelmingly nice: accommodating, sensitive, telepathic perhaps, full of pain and sometimes martyrdom. He says he buttons up his emotions, but he’s actually very emotional. Apparently confused and depressed, he tends to be (in protective manner) self-deprecatory. And one also feels a sense of disillusionment: that his pictures didn’t change the world, partly. ‘A burnt-out and tense old bugger,’ is the way he puts it.

So how else would he describe himself? ‘People think I’m a misery. But I’m not.’ Certainly, he can be heavy-going. He says he’d like to be known for his photos and his fairness. And he then says he’d like people to consider him fun. ‘I bet that surprises you.’ He laughs. But it’s true that there are occasional bursts of humour and happiness.

‘I’m just motivated by intense thought and emotion. I can’t let anything past me without analysing it,’ says the man who compares his eyes to a combine harvester, taking in everything in the field. ‘I’m constantly thinking, like a 24-hour-a-day machine. I’m a kind of captive of my own eyes, mind and body.’

In bed last night, he was counting people. ‘A dozen really nice people I knew who’ve been killed in the last 20 years. And I thought, why them?’ His delivery is placid and there’s something in him that makes you want to mother him.

‘I know this sounds sinister, but the ghosts of those dead people are in those filing cabinets here at night with me. I really believe those pictures in there have some kind of effect on this atmosphere.’

He spends a lot of time alone, here in the house he dubs a private factory of emotion. ‘Yes, I am lonely,’ he flinches at the question. ‘I suppose that’s why I over-clobber this place and spend so much time polishing up. I am burning myself up all the time, I’m on fire. But let’s hope the fire engines don’t get me.’ Vrrrzzzzzooom-the Royal Naval plane from the nearby base screams overhead.

His guilt and conscience weigh heavy. ‘It’s like having two vests on a hot summer’s day.’ He looks bleak. ‘Obviously something nasty is going to happen to me for getting away with all these things’ – like escaping being murdered, photographing dying people and starving children. ‘That’s probably why I look worried all the time.’

That’s also why he works so hard, working to divert himself. ‘As a human being, I’m worn out,’ he says later. ‘I feel as if all my nerve endings are hanging out. I’ve almost been skinned alive, really.’

He’s passionate about his work – ‘I inject a pound of flesh into each picture’ – and inspirational. ‘I love it. And thank God I do, because I haven’t anything else to do.’

Central to his character is a desire to prove and overcome things. ‘I can’t overcome not being able to read the written word properly. But I try to overcome my photography: every night I go to bed and fear my darkroom.’ He’s racked by guilt at leaving his wife, Christine, for former model Laraine Ashton. His wife then died of cancer, ‘and the other person (he doesn’t name her) somehow went off me’. Christine died on the morning of his son’s wedding. ‘If you think I haven’t picked up the bill for this feast of misery over the last 20 years, you’re wrong. I have.’

Does he let people close to him? ‘They don’t get much chance, really.’ He later explains: ‘I’m a social outcast in some respects. People get bored with my downer conversations at dinner parties.’ He also says he’s so emotionally wound-up that he used to drink a lot. ‘And that broke up all kinds of relationships.’

Is he potty? He starts laughing and looks down. ‘I’ve walked a very fine line between madness, hypocrisy and contradiction. I’ve probably crawled through it all and come out reasonably balanced.’

And does he consider himself brave? ‘I’m certainly prepared to go a lot further than most people. But in some ways that’s just folly.’ He holds with destiny and fate. ‘I have looked at myself as some sort of Dalek that is controlled, although I don’t know who’s controlling me.’

And does he believe in God? ‘That’s your most important question. I behave like an atheist. But deep down, I find it hard to believe that this was not all created. Yet when I see people being murdered and men crying in front of me . . .’