He was a History Researcher with The Irish Manuscripts Commission and an Editorial Assistant on The Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell (8 volumes).
His previous collections are: Cities of Mirrors (Beaver Row Press, Dublin, 1984), and Pieces of Time (Lapwing Publications, Belfast, 2004).
Empire of Shadows develops and interrogates themes of war and peace first examined in his Selected Poems.
Some of the verses look at the effects of carpet-bombing of cities in the Second World War, the destruction by atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Blitz in London, the targeting of German cities by Britain’s Bomber Command, the fire-bombing of Tokyo, as well as the mass violence of more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In May, 2019, The Limerick Writers Centre published McFadden's Selected Prose, entitled Organic Words, a compilation of essays, newspaper articles, reviews and magazine pieces written over a literary and journalistic career of 50 years.