Although I set out to see the exhibition of women war artists at the Imperial War Museum,

I found that I was much more engaged by this magnificent exhibition of work by war photographer Don McCullin.

In fact, I was hopping mad with myself that I'd dawdled through the women artists and left myself insufficient time to watch the 30 minute video of McCullin talking about his work.

I find myself lost for words to describe the power of these photographs, some of them unbearably sad, some starkly beautiful.

There were images that made me gasp ... even as that voice in my head is thinking, 'Great story.'

I knew little about Don McCullin himself although his images are so familiar. But a sense of a man's unswerving honesty and decency pervades this exhibition. His first published photograph in 1958 was of London gangsters on the streets where he grew up. His experiences left him suffering from war fatigue and depression but in recent years he has found healing in landscape photography. 'My landscapes have become a form of meditation. They have healed a lot of my pain and guilt,' he says. But the exhibition is also a damning commentary on the decline of British newspapers from those heady days of the pioneering Sunday Times magazine under Harold Evans.

In my teens, I used to get up at the crack of dawn to get hold of the Sunday Times before my dad ...

McCullin eventually got the sack. Which says it all.