Irvine Welsh

Top five films to have missed out on a Best Picture Oscar

As the 2013 Academy Awards draw closer, we have a look at some of the finest films to be overlooked

These films may not have won the Academy Award for Best Picture but they have however, made it to this top 5 list. Needless to say only one film can win the award each year, which leaves many brilliant and iconic films missing out. With the Oscars 2013…

Scottish Book of the Year Award 2012 shortlist announced

Nominees include Alan Warner, Aonghas MacNeacail, Carol Ann Duffy, Ewan Morrison and Irvine Welsh

The shortlist has been announced for the 2012 Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year. This years award will be chosen from a list of seven authors including James Kelman, Irvine Welsh and Kathleen Jamie to become the best Scottish book of…

Ten significant modern Scottish novels

Featuring Michel Faber, Andrew O’Hagan, AL Kennedy and Anne Donovan

Under the Skin (2000). Set in the Highlands, Michel Faber’s full-length fiction debut was a real shock to the system. Isserley is an über-earthly creature with deep scars and thick specs who is on a mission to capture muscle-bound men for creepy…

Edinburgh International Book Festival: Highlights

Seamus Heaney, Michael Morpurgo, Irvine Welsh, Nile Rodgers and more

Seamus Heaney The Nobel prizewinner is in town for what will be an undoubted highlight of the month (if not the year) as he chews some literary fat with Karl Miller and Andrew O’Hagan. See online feature at list.co.uk/festival. 3-18 Aug, 6.30pm, £10…

Irvine Welsh comes to 2012 Edinburgh Book Festival with Trainspotting prequel Skagboys

The Scottish author jogs back into the past with Begbie and co

While us Scots haven’t got the best reputation for putting fitness and health at the top of our to-do lists, Irvine Welsh is doing his bit for the image of his nation in further-off climes. Now mainly based in the US, he has had to knock…

First Shot: Just Say Aye - an extract from Irvine Welsh's Skagboys

A sneak peek inside the Edinburgh author's Trainspotting prequel

We head oot and dive oantae a 16, bound fir Johnny’s pad at Tolcross. It’s a blindin hot day so we sit doonstairs at the back for a better view ay the passin fanny. Back top deck wi Begbie, tae intimidate wideos, back bottom wi Sick Boy tae leer at…

Interview: Irvine Welsh on Trainspotting prequel Skagboys

The new book, Leith, Twitter and the importance of subcultures

Early on in our transatlantic phone conversation, it suddenly becomes unclear whether I’m chatting to Irvine Welsh or Frank Begbie. When I ask whether he might well be the busiest man in Scottish culture right now, the response comes over loud, clear…

Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy

An agonisingly watered-down imitation of Welsh's short story

Nothing dates faster than drug culture, and writer-director Rob Heydon’s Irvine Welsh adaptation arrives nearly two decades after the era of the dedicated pill-popper. Taken from Welsh’s story 'The Undefeated', part of the 1996 compilation that provides…

Preview of 2012 - Irvine Welsh's Skagboys

Renton, Sick Boy et al are revisited in this Trainspotting prequel

Wonder how Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and co got to be the drugged-up life-rejecting Leith loons in Trainspotting? Well, wonder no more, as the publication of Skagboys brings us a bit more background on the individual and social circumstances revolving…

Film adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy to premiere at Toronto Film Festival

The premiere of Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy will take place at the Toronto Independent Film Festival WHEN, which takes place from 8–18 September. The film is directed by music video director Rob Heydon, making his big screen debut, and stars Scottish actors…

Neighbourhood Watch: Leith, Edinburgh

A beginner's guide to the capital's port town

What’s it like? It’s Leith. If you’re an Edinburgh List reader, it’s very likely you live there. Glossy bars, Michelin-starred restaurants and warehouse conversions squaring off against cobbles, pint’n’pie pubs and Hibees. Vibrant, community-focused (it…

Five of the best books set in Edinburgh

Five books set in the Scottish capital, including Kidnapped and Trainspotting

1: Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg Don’t be put off by the title, this is a compelling and surprisingly modern novel which confronts the hypocrisy of the self-righteous. It inspired numerous later works, including Robert Louis…

Irvine Welsh Q&A at charity Trainspotting screening

Iconic book-cum-film Trainspotting takes centre stage as its author Irvine Welsh does his bit for charity. A screening of the film will be held at the Dominion Cinema in Edinburgh on Wed 1 Sep to mark the 10th anniversary of Scottish charity Love in…

Paul Reekie – Lost In Action

Five Reasons why the Great Lost Genius of contemporary Scottish letters must not be forgotten. Children of Albion Rovers. In 1996, Reekie’s novella Submission caused a scandal when it appeared alongside work by Irvine Welsh and co in Rebel Inc’s…

Scottish Books - Irvine Welsh, Alan Bissett and Ewan Morrison

Irvine Welsh inspired a generation of young Scottish writers and showed there was literature to be found in the lives of the Scottish underdog. Two of the leading lights of that next generation are Alan Bissett and Ewan Morrison. Both authors boast…

Edinburgh International Book Festival and Edge Festival add to line-up

From a Poet Laureate to cult TV show writers, this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival launched in style, with a programme boasting writers, poets, politicians, photographers and artists from 45 countries. Highlights of the August line-up…

Preview 2009 - Books

It’s another hot year for the Scottish contingent with Denise Mina, Irvine Welsh and Ewan Morrison all bringing out books (July) although arguably the country’s most intriguing 2009 publication comes from Dundee debutant Gavin Bain. California Schemin…

Scottish Book Trust - Days Like This

Refining that old platitude that everyone’s got a novel in them, the Scottish Book Trust launched their Days Like This project earlier this year, looking for ordinary people’s stories of their extraordinary days. ‘Days Like This is really about…

5 Questions - Irvine Welsh

Give us five words to describe Crime? Crime is an existential thriller. Which authors should be more famous than they are now? I used to say Ron Butlin, but I think that’s changing now. I think Doug Johnstone will soon be very famous. If I have…

Clubbing onstage

Chemical Romance

As an experience that thrives on the spontaneity of the moment, and, often, some kind of altered state of consciousness, clubbing is a difficult subject to translate into drama. Since the mid-90s, the much-trumpeted drug movie or novel has largely…

Irvine Welsh - Crime

CRIME DRAMA (Jonathan Cape) Irvine Welsh has never shied away from the seamy side of life, and for his ninth novel he crosses the Atlantic to the balmy climes of Florida, only to uncover a cesspit of evil that would put some of his previous local…