by tim_bell | Jan 22, 2014 | Latest News
If you see a man called John Harvey going about, buy him a pint. He’s a playwright to trade. He read the drafts of my book and said to himself ‘It’s good, very good. As answers to exam questions, that is. But where’s the story, where’s...
by tim_bell | Dec 13, 2013 | Latest News
In Edinburgh for the festivities? Up in Edinburgh they call you to the so-called ‘underground’ tours, by which they mean you guddle about in the cellars of the Old Town. We mean something different by ‘underground’ in Leith. Full of references...
by tim_bell | Dec 13, 2013 | Latest News
Spud stirred restlessly in his bed. It wasn’t the first Christmas Eve he had spent in a hostel. It seemed crazy, but that damn street light just outside his window was brighter than usual. The wee parcel that had been brought in by a stranger and left at the front...
by tim_bell | Nov 29, 2013 | Latest News
So Irvine Welsh has written a short story for the Christmas edition of The Big Issue, the monthly magazine of a charity that supports homeless folk. Good on him – it’s one of several worthy causes Welsh has supported over the years. But we should worry....
by tim_bell | Nov 29, 2013 | Latest News
Another plaudit comes Welsh’s way. In a Scottish Book Trust poll Trainspotting has just been voted the favourite Scottish novel of the last half-century. Congratulations are in order. Can’t argue with a popular vote. But Welsh is right to raise doubts...
by tim_bell | Oct 31, 2013 | Latest News
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...
by tim_bell | Oct 12, 2013 | Latest News
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)...
by tim_bell | Sep 24, 2013 | Stop press
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...
by tim_bell | Aug 22, 2013 | Latest News
On the second page of Trainspotting Welsh makes clear the relationship between Leith and Edinburgh. Renton and Sick Boy, desperate for a taxi at the Foot of Leith Walk to go and score with Johnny Swan in Tollcross, fulminate: ‘Supposed to be a rank… [all...
by tim_bell | Aug 18, 2013 | Latest News
The latest offering in book form on Irvine Welsh and the Trainspotting industry has just appeared. John Neil Munro’s Lust for Life hit the bookshops last week. Munro is a long-standing friend of Welsh, so it’s similar to Sandy Mcnair’s Carspotting....
