Christy Brown: The Irish artist portrayed by Shane MacGowan and Daniel Day-Lewis in the same year

(Credits: Far Out / Palace Pictures / Alamy)

Sun 15 March 2026 10:00, UK

“He saw all this gay, hurtful life spread in generous haphazard prodigality around him like a warm sea,” author and painter Christy Brown wrote in his 1970 book Down All the Days.

Adding, “And he grew weak with tongueless tenderness, with the murderous longing to step over the threshold, through the waiting door, and stay forever beyond the lighted window, and never know the hunger for voyages, never heed the wind-whispering hailing call across impassable seas.”

Brown was a gritty and soulful Irish artist in the grandest version of the Dublin tradition, but his challenges in life went well beyond troubles with drink or making ends meet. He suffered from severe cerebral palsy all his life, which forced him to learn to write and draw with the only limb he had reasonable control over. He would eventually tell his personal story in his 1954 memoir My Left Foot, which was a success and helped him carry on with a career as an artist.

“It was the kind of book they expected a cripple to write,” he later said in a 1970 interview, seemingly eager to distance himself from the biography he’d written as a 22-year-old, “Too sentimental and corny”.

Brown, who died in 1981, was famous, in part, because of how he’d managed to overcome a disability, but he also remained desperately eager to push his work forward and to be viewed as a writer on his own terms, just like anyone else. “It’s not how you write a book,” he said, “It’s what you say. What does it matter if I hold the pencil in my hand or in my toe or even in my ear?”

In 1989, his story reached a far wider international audience when a film adaptation was made of My Left Foot, with Daniel Day-Lewis playing the role and ultimately winning the first of his three Oscars. The actor has stated, in recent years, that an able-bodied man playing that part, especially in the extreme method-acting approach he was famous for, would be understandably a non-starter today, but at the time, it was considered a remarkable achievement, and launched Day-Lewis into the elite category of dramatic actors.

Meanwhile, in the very same year, another legendary Irish performer thought of a much easier way to occupy Christy Brown’s mind and take on his character. This was Shane MacGowan, who recorded a tribute to Brown on the Pogues’ album Peace and Love, released just a few months after My Left Foot arrived in cinemas.

It’s possible that the film had inspired MacGowan’s song, which was named after Brown’s aforementioned novel Down All the Days, but his Pogues bandmate Terry Woods was also a second cousin of Christy Brown, and it’s equally likely that MacGowan was already a fan to begin with, as Brown’s fascination with the darker corners of city life, and his penchant for the drink, were certainly relatable instincts for Shane.

While Day-Lewis had put himself through physical and mental hell to try to authentically enter Christy Brown’s mindset and re-create his life experience, MacGowan paid tribute in a slightly more light-hearted way: “Christy Brown, a clown around town / Now a man of renown from Dingle to Down / I can type with me toes, suck stout up me nose / And where it’s gonna end, God only knows”.

The creation of the song and the film in the same year may have been a coincidence, but they did intersect when My Left Foot was finally released in America toward the end of 1989, and ‘Down All the Days’ was used as the music for the film’s promotional trailer, despite not appearing in the film itself.