After a career in education which included leading secondary schools in Lothian and Strathclyde and serving in the educational management and administration of North Lanarkshire Council, Dan Sweeney decided to turn his interest to local history.
In 2013 he published Shadows of the City, a chronicle of Glasgow’s lost mansions and houses, and followed this up with Postscript to the Past (2015), which traces the rise and fall of many of Renfrewshire’s lost houses, Lost Mansions and Houses of Lanarkshire (2017) and most recently Country, Town and Coast (2020), which deals with Ayrshire’s lost mansions and houses. He is currently researching a work on Dumfries, Galloway and the Borders.
He has given presentations on topics arising from the books to various groups and organisations, and was one of the original presenters of STV (Glasgow)’s People’s History Show, Scotland’s first television programme devoted to local history, and contributed a number of items to the show over the years.