Irvine Welsh

Born in the Leith area of Edinburgh, Welsh moved to London in 1978 where he immersed himself in the punk rock scene and received a suspended sentence for trashing a North London community centre. In an attempt to mend his wild ways he returned to Edinburgh in the late 1980s and studied for an MBA at Herriot-Watt University.

His debut novel Trainspotting, a visceral account of heroin addicts written in a thick Leith dialect, was published in 1993 and immediately became a cult success. Trainspotting was adapted for the big screen by Danny Boyle in 1996 by which time Welsh had also penned a collection of short stories called The Acid House (1994) and a second novel, Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995). Welsh subsequently wrote two sequels to Trainspotting – Porno (2001) and Dead Men’s Trousers (2018) – as well as a prequel called Skagboys (2012) which traced the descent of Trainspotting’s protagonists into addiction and squalor.

In addition, Welsh has written a number of standalone novels, including Filth (1998), Glue (2001) and The Blade Artist (2016), which address the lives of the Scottish working class in dynamic, unflinching and frequently very funny prose.