Illustrations, self-portraits, drawings and school essays, as well as unpublished and unseen hand-written lyrics by Shane MacGowan have all been published in a new limited-edition book, The Eternal Buzz and the Crock of Gold.
Family, friends and fans of the songwriter and former Pogues frontman were at the Park Cafe in Dublin on Tuesday night to launch the volume.
Although internationally renowned as the writer of songs including Fairytale of New York and A Pair of Brown Eyes, MacGowan has also been painting and drawing for most of his life.
During lockdown his wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, went through items she had been collecting for more than three decades and said she felt as if she had 'unearthed treasure' when she realised the amount of material she had retained.
#shanemcgowan at the launch of his new book in Dublin tonight @rtenews @RTE_Ents pic.twitter.com/ZAzK1XNVVu
— Sinéad Crowley (@SineadCrowley) November 8, 2022
The book represents six decades of Shane's artwork and includes drawings of Bono, Grace Jones and Kirsty MacColl, as well as love notes and even MacGowan's cocktail recipes.
Art critic, Waldemar Januzczak described the book as 'splattering onto the page in a psychic storm of lines, words and colour".
The hardback book which has a limited print run of just 1000 copies is priced from €1000.
