Kineton cameraman publishes book about his experiences while reporting in the heat of war

A veteran cameraman who lives in Kineton has published a book covering two of the major assignments he was given in the 30 years he worked for Sky News.

Tom Radburn, who also lived in Northend, has covered almost every major news story worldwide over the last 30 years including standing on the wreckage of the Twin Towers days after 9/11 and arriving in Paris hours after the death of Princess Diana.

He has published a book called Right Eye For Hire about two of his assignments – the first being the siege of Sarajevo in 1992.

Tom said: “[I was] a firebrand war correspondent, hellbent on a story within that besieged city that no other journalist

would touch {it was] a suicide mission.

“[At the time I was] a young ambitious cameraman desperate for experience.

"I take you step by step through the events that led up to the moment we did what nobody else believed could be done.”

The book is also about Tom’s coverage of the Kurdish refugee crisis post-Gulf War in 1991.

He said: “[this is] the detailed story of how my colleagues and I survived amongst the living and the dead to tell the story.

“As I try to explain in the forward, this book is about the ethics of Photo Journalism from inside the mind of the one that composes the pictures.

"In a fledgling age when everybody carries a video camera in their pocket, it is an attempt to provoke thought about what we point that camera at and why using extreme examples of true ethical dilemmas.”

Tom added: “There are no big questions answered in this book. It is simply an attempt to give you a look through a macro lens at the business of TV journalism.

"I make no apology for choosing two assignments that show the good that journalism does and how it can influence or even guide events to a better outcome for the people involved in the story.”

Tom was the first British cameraman to get into Kuwait City on the day of its liberation in 1991 and shot the exclusive pictures of the raising of the Kuwait flag inside liberated Kuwait.

He also covered all of the Balkan wars. Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo. wars in Africa,The Congo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Uganda and in the Middle East, Iraq and Lebanon.

He met Colonel Gaddafi in his desert hideout, filmed Saddam Hussein at one of his legendary military rallies in Mosul, Iraq, and flew with Yasser Arafat to Washington when he signed the Middle East peace agreement with Yitzhak Rabin and Bill Clinton in 1993.

He said: “Between 1988 and 2018 from Afghanistan to Northern Ireland, if it was happening then I was sent there.”

Kindle and paperback editions of Right Eye for Hire are available to buy on Amazon now.

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