He received worldwide attention during the 1999 Kosovo War, when he served as the spokesperson for NATO. He described the civilians killed by the NATO bombing of Serbia in the effort to prevent the Serbs from retaining Kosovo as the "cost to defeat an evil". He received his B.A. (Hons.) in Modern History and French from the University of Sussex (1977) and his D.Phil. in Modern History from Lincoln College, Oxford (1981). Shea is married and has two children, Chiara and Alexander.