You’re invited to the Trainspotting on Location book launch

Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the original publication of Trainspotting, comes Tim Bell’s critical analysis and geographical account of Leith, Choose Life Choose Leith: Trainspotting on Location which will be published on 3 August 2018 by Luath Press. 

You are invited to the official book launch which takes place on 2 August. Details below.

An experienced tour guide with his walking company Leith Walks, Bell weaves his first hand knowledge of Leith into his in depth analysis of Irvine Welsh’s work, converting his walking tour into literary form. Tim Bell is a speaker, writer and tour guide.

Raised in rural Northumberland, he travelled in the Middle East and North Africa as a young man before se ling in Scotland to work as a chaplain to the port of Leith and with young people with special needs. He founded his highly acclaimed tour company, Leith Walks and has since taken hundreds of people through the streets of Edinburgh and Leith, exploring Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting on location. Tim has lived in Leith with his family since the 1980s. 

The HIV/AIDs pandemic of the 1980s was prevalent in Leith, a issue that Welsh illustrates through the characters of Renton, Spud, Begbie and Sick Boy. Bell walks through the history of the area, tying the experience of these characters to the real-life accounts of people who were affected by drugs and HIV/AIDs in Leith at the me. 

Based on Bell’s Trainspotting walks, the book is a pertinent addition to current conversations around gentrification and deprivation on the outskirts of affluent areas, including the recent local ‘Save Leith Walk’ campaign. 

Book Launch: Thursday 2 August. Leith Dockers Club – 6.30pm. Admission is free and all are welcome. Tickets on Eventbrite here

Choose Life Choose Leith: Trainspotting on Location walking tours are running in this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe at 10.30am on selected dates.  The guided tour coincides with the 25th anniversary of the original publication of Trainspotting, and Tim Bell’s critical analysis and geographical account of Leith will bring it all to life.

Tim said : “What began in Leith left Leith and became something much larger. Trainspotting is now three things : a three-fold art form, a cultural reference point that combines heroin and social history – they talk about ‘the Trainspotting generation’ and with Welsh and Boyle creating updates, a growing cult, of which Leith is HQ.”

Bell’s walking tour takes place on certain dates in August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe. More details here.