Welcome to Leith Walks, home of the original Trainspotting Tours and the book Choose Life. Choose Leith: Trainspotting on Location by Tim Bell, published by Luath Press.

The tours: engaging, intelligent, entertaining, heart-breaking, well-informed in every part of the Trainspotting Phenomenon. COMMENTS >>

The book: comprehensive, hugely informative, ground-breaking, very read-able, the only serious commentary, analysis and introduction to Trainspotting the book, the play and the film. EXCERPTS AND REVIEWS >>

 

From the Blog

Lou Reed: the man

The lately lamented Lou Reed is the songster of Perfect Day, on which Trainspotting the film pivots: it ruins the film and it makes it, depends how you are reading it. To play Perfect Day when a young man is in a dangerous overdose is perverse and cruel. That's if you...

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Do the math!

My aim is to write a 70,000-word book. This follows that each section, or chapter, has an allocated percentage. Writing a potted history of Leith in 7,000 is a challenge. The aim is to demonstrate a) that Scotland is not England, and Leith is not Edinburgh, and b)...

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Funny how it goes…

Visiting family in Uganda recently, I came across some Brits, one of them a Scot, and the conversation turned to Trainspotting, as it tends to in my company. Before we met again 10 days later they got a (pirate) copy of the film, and we had an earnest discussion about...

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