War photographer Don McCullin at 82: 'When you’ve seen Palmyra once you become drugged by it'

But when McCullin first saw it back then, ‘It got under my skin. When you’ve seen it once you become drugged by it. After the sun’s gone and dusk sets in, there’s a mood that is unaccountable. It’s compulsive, despite the damage. The damage that’s been done to it is the greatest tragedy in archaeology.’

After that first trip, he took his photographs to his publishers and suggested doing a book. ‘They’re always supportive of me, and they said yes – but with a slight yawn attached to it, and gave me a pretty miserable advance.’ McCullin teamed up with writer and publisher Barnaby Rogerson, who put the book into historical context, and they went on journeys together through the Roman frontiers from Algeria to Syria.

Southern Frontiers: A Journey Across the Roman Empire was published in 2010. ‘And when Isil blew up the temple in Palmyra, the value of my book went up so much, it was absurd,’ says McCullin, with his usual deadpan delivery. (The current price for a new copy on Amazon is £873.69.)

McCullin has been back several times, and was one of the last photographers to shoot the site before it was damaged. His most recent – and probably final – visit was earlier this year with the historian Dan Cruickshank, for forthcoming BBC documentary The Road to Palmyra, to investigate the importance of Palmyra and to assess the scale of the devastation.

They were a small team – Cruickshank, director Adrian Sibley, a cameraman, a security man. McCullin was delighted to be asked. He was hoping to improve on his previous trips to Palmyra, which had been difficult – on one occasion he tripped over some masonry in the Temple of Bel, cracking a rib and collapsing a lung (‘I had to carry on photographing in the most appalling pain’).

Another occasion was blighted by the bureaucracy of the Russians, who were in charge and wouldn’t give him access to anything. (‘They were very unpleasant; they manage to keep their unpleasantness going all over the world, the Russians.’)

‘When I finally got there with Dan, with full-blown permission to work, I told myself, “You deserve this,”’ he says now. ‘So I was in heaven, really.’

Their trip began in Damascus, where they visited the National Museum, which had been closed for seven years since the war began, to see some of the artefacts that were smuggled out of Palmyra. They make a good team: McCullin, 82, with his impassive face and startling blue eyes and Cruickshank, 68, blazing with enthusiasm, expressive hands flying all over the place, who was heartbroken to see what had happened to his beloved Palmyra. ‘Dan took this personally,’ says McCullin. 

‘I could see the emotion bubbling up in him – it was almost as if someone had harmed his family. He was deeply hurt by the destruction.’

McCullin was also heartsick, but looking through the eyes of a photographer, he found a different kind of beauty. Damaged, but beauty nonetheless. He is also more circumspect. ‘Let’s be honest: the wonders of the world didn’t just happen, especially when they were carved out of stone that weighs two or three tons. They were built by slaves and people died in their hundreds quarrying and constructing.’

There is no accommodation at the site so they camp out in a room in Tadmur, the neighbouring town where the residents of Palmyra have been displaced. Because of his age, McCullin gets the only bed. Cruikshank, in a woolly hat, gets the floor.

‘I slept rather well, actually,’ says McCullin now. ‘But I think Dan woke up covered in fleas one morning.’ McCullin always takes a soft pillow, PG Tips and some Marvel powdered milk. ‘I won’t wake up in the morning without a cup of proper tea.’ Not exactly the hard man.

Age is taking its toll. At one point in the documentary McCullin attempts to climb on to the roof of a building in Homs to get a particular shot of the desecrated old city with the mosque in the background; he has to be hauled up and it’s all a bit undignified.

‘I could have sprung up there without any trouble, years ago,’ he says now, laughing. ‘My mind says, “Let’s do this,” but my body says, “Hang on a minute.” I don’t have any embarrassment about it, frankly. I needed to get that shot and that was the only way I could get up there. I bet it was comical.

‘But the result was these extraordinary pictures: it was like looking at a sea of devastation. But instead of water, it was concrete – miles and miles of concrete destroyed, all the chatter of people’s homes that would have gone on in the evening when families came together… It was all dead, dead, dead.’

The great things about McCullin are his lack of arrogance, his curiosity and appetite for life. He is very open and strangely uncynical for one who has seen so much pain. Photography is an act of devotion for him, and he is enthralled by ‘the journey’ – finding the subject, loading the camera, taking the picture, printing it. ‘I’ve been doing it for 60 years and I’m never bored.’

He was thrilled, for example, to see and photograph Crac des Chevaliers, a spectacular edifice built in 1142, which, according to Cruickshank, is one of the finest examples of preserved medieval castles in the world. On previous trips, McCullin had been unable to get access to it.

It was occupied by jihadists, who used it as a shield, but it was bombed anyway. Now there is some dispute about whether the damage was caused by Russian air strikes or the jihadists setting off bombs on their way out.

In the documentary, when Cruickshank sees what has happened to its interior, he puts his head in his hands and is nearly in tears. And his legs buckle at the magnificent Temple of Bel – the jewel in Palmyra’s crown, 2,000 years old, the most famous building there.

Even the model of it, which was in the museum there, has been smashed. Cruickshank is beside himself. The pair gaze at the remaining entrance arch, which still stands, alone and defiant. ‘Maybe we should just sit in silence,’ says Cruickshank. ‘I’d welcome that,’ says McCullin.

As well as blowing up the site, Isil carried out a mass execution of Syrian soldiers in the theatre at Palmyra, and forced the residents of Tadmur to watch. But it was the murder of Khaled Al-Asaad that became a defining moment of their horrific brutality among many such moments of the war in Syria.

The 82-year-old scholar had been the principle custodian of Palmyra for many years and was the director of the museum there. McCullin had met him on a previous trip to Palmyra, the one where he’d fallen and injured himself. He had crawled painfully into the museum hoping to get permission to photograph its contents. ‘Which is always difficult because they’re frightened you’ll turn the pictures into postcards.’

But the kindly Asaad said simply, ‘Sit down. Would you like some tea?’

‘I sat on the edge of his sofa and he said, “What can I do for you?” and I thought, “It’s bound to be a ‘no’ anyway,” but I said, “Is it possible that I could photograph some of the artefacts here?” And he said, “Why not?” He was so lovely and charming. He lifted my spirits.’

Asaad refused to leave when Isil arrived in May 2015. Many members of his family – who were also involved with looking after the site – had fled with many precious artefacts, taking them to Damascus, leaving almost as Isil soldiers were arriving. Asaad was kept for a month, and likely tortured, while the militants tried to ascertain the whereabouts of valuable artefacts. He refused to talk.

In the documentary, two of Asaad’s sons take McCullin and Cruickshank to the place where he was executed. They tell of how he was instructed to kneel, and the old man said, ‘I will not kneel like a lackey, I will only kneel to God. I will die like the palms of Palmyra. I will die standing, like her columns.’ He was beheaded, and his body hung in the market square for three days – even though Islam dictates that bodies should be buried immediately after death.

‘That man was my age,’ says McCullin, ‘and you know something? I don’t want to die, but if I died with that amount of dignity and courage, I’d feel really proud of my time on earth. To stand up against monsters like that.’

No restoration work has yet begun on Palmyra – it is considered too dangerous as there are still unexploded bombs around – and there is some debate as to whether the site should be left as it is, or whether it should be restored, a hugely ambitious and expensive undertaking when two of Syria’s proudest cities – Aleppo and Homs – are still in ruins.

McCullin is inclined towards restraint. ‘I think leave it, really. Because it’s like further desecrating a grave. It was reconstructed anyway, to a large degree. If you go there in 2,000 years’ time and see those stones, you would still be mesmerised.’

Cruickshank is inclined to agree. ‘History has become an innocent victim of politics and ideology,’ he says in the documentary. ‘This is a crime scene… until peace is brokered, Palmyra remains toppled; the broken heart of Syria.’

‘We have our own agendas when we go on these journeys,’ says McCullin, ‘I tried not to show mine, I was just thrilled to be there. My pictures will say that these extraordinary pillars were made 2,000 years ago and they’re still standing – despite what’s happened to them. It will be like history in clarity.’

He may never return to Palmyra. Aside from anything else, he probably won’t be allowed back after this documentary airs. (At one point in the programme, McCullin photographs a billboard displaying Assad, Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, commenting, ‘I’ve just taken a photograph of some of the world’s most appalling people.’)

But while rummaging around at home the other day, he found Khaled Al-Asaad’s business card. It stopped him in his tracks. ‘I thought, “Oh Christ, I bring these things upon myself by going to these places, so I don’t have any complaints if I get injured or bashed around or detained.” You come away knowing you’ve still got your life, you’re going to get on an aeroplane and go back to your home and family. You haven’t paid the price these people have.

‘I grew up in London in the war; I’ve seen so many wars in my life. It hasn’t hardened me, but that’s why I turned my face to do this kind of thing.’

Over the years, McCullin has joined mercenaries in Congo, photographed the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, covered famine in Biafra, the Vietnam War, the Troubles in Northern Ireland; he was thrown in jail in Uganda; he went to Cambodia, Lebanon and El Salvador, where he broke his arm in five places falling off a roof. He has also produced 17 books, worked with writers including Norman Lewis and Bruce Chatwin, had countless exhibitions, and won heaps of awards and a knighthood.

He says in the documentary that this will probably be his last adventure, but there’s no sign of him slowing down. He’s off to Iran with journalist Charles Glass later in the year and this summer he has an exhibition in LA; he has a major retrospective coming up at the Tate next February. He’s had a stroke and a quadruple bypass but age has not withered him. He’s entirely sharp, articulate and, after recent cataract operations, he even has perfect eyesight. ‘I can now sit in my house and see the view of the far Roman hillside as clearly as if I’m looking at an etching under my nose.’

Is there anything good about getting old?’ That’s a tricky question, he says. ‘I don’t think there is, really. Some of my really close friends have died – people I worked with who encouraged me and helped me; they were like my family. You can’t keep going up to London to funerals, it’s a bloody nightmare – I wish they’d stop dying, my friends. I’m astonished I’m still alive myself.’

He has had three wives and five children. In 2002 he married the travel writer Catherine Fairweather; they live in a village in Somerset and have a son, Max, who is 14. And age has made McCullin grateful, ‘To still be alive. I’m married to a nice woman, I’ve got a nice house to live in with nice views and nice friends.

When you’re young, you take energy for granted – you just help yourself to it, but when you’re older you’re reminded all the time that if you put a foot wrong you might fall down the stairs.’ Sometimes, he says, he’s walking along in what he thinks is quite a merry fashion and his wife says, ‘Stop shuffling.’ And he has got more grumpy. ‘A bit Alf Garnett – I rant about all the things that people my age rant about.’

Don McCullin is one of our greatest living photographers. He is often defined by his war pictures, though he hates to be thought of as a war photographer. I wonder if there is other more recent work he’d like to be defined by. He can’t answer that, but says that 15 years ago he was in Kurdistan and took a photograph of a group of Kurdish boys, all about six or seven.

‘They’d climbed up to this gigantic carving of a prophet who is holding a book in his lap, and the boys are all sitting in the book.’ But he lost the negative a long time ago (he has 60,000 negatives in his house). ‘I found it last week and I’ve printed it – I’m going to include it in my exhibition next year. Nobody’s ever seen it and it’s probably the sweetest picture I’ve ever taken, such a change from what I normally do.’

He’s been working in his darkroom for several weeks (‘Making some of the best prints I’ve ever made’), but has shut it up for the summer as he doesn’t like going into it when it’s sunny (‘It seems like throwing a day’s life away’) and prefers to be outside.

‘May is the greatest time in England – everything is bursting in my garden, exploding with every form of blossom you can think of.’

Despite the melancholy that is crystallised in his pictures, there’s something of the invincible summer in Don McCullin. Long may it last.

The Road to Palmyra airs on Monday 7 May at 9pm on BBC4