Topics
John McSweeney writes essays about Art, authoring Crime-Fiction, and Life.

Essays on Art
- Figure Paintings, 2013 — How he returned to making figure paintings
- Painting the Movers — How he was talked into painting 47 figures, 13 trucks and 2 dogs
- Figure Paintings, 2014-2016 — How he utilised a new studio to paint larger pictures
- Neptune Paintings — How he reworked an ancient Roman myth
- West End Ware — How he fused Munch’s The Scream with retail therapy and Ancient Greek art
- Yet Another Spectacle — How he responded to Guy Debord and car crash photography
- Happy Hour — How a chance encounter with his son completed the picture
- Stencils — How he learned from Larry Wall and developed a love for Reusable Painting Objects
- Influences — How he fell under the spell of Turner, Rembrandt and Velázquez
- Producing Digital Prints — How he came to make Giclée and C-Type photographic prints.
- The Grenfell Tower Fire — How a tragedy affected his work.
- A Very English Summer — How thirteen paintings became one
- Life and Art — How life’s experiences determine the nature of art
Essays on Crime Fiction
- Crime Writing — How he began adding to slush-piles
- The Three-Towered Castle — How he came to write it
- A Short History of Ireland — How the English and the Irish contributed to a bloody history
- The Butcher of Cairo — How Marilyn Stasio, and the ghost of Hemingway, showed him another way to write fiction
Essays on Life
- Looking for a Ghost — How he searched for his grandfather, Frank Cave
- Covent Garden Market — How his father crafted the fine art of ducking and diving
- Alfred Hitchcock — How Hitch hoodwinked market porters when directing Frenzy
- Richard Harris — How the actor demonstrated a fondness for a fight
- A Memoir of a Kleptomaniac — How his father was driven by an impulse control disorder
- Sid and Nancy — How Nancy Spungen predicted her demise at the hands of Sid Vicious