Board & Ambassadors

Irvine Welsh was born in Edinburgh in 1958, lived in London after leaving school, but returned in the 1980’s and worked in the Council's housing department. His first novel, Trainspotting (1993), a black humoured portrait of a group of young heroin users living in Edinburgh, in 1996. His most recent works are The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (2006),  a play, Babylon Heights (2006), written with Dean Cavanagh, and If You Liked School You'll Love Work (2007).

He prefers the title ‘cultural activist’ to ‘writer’, managing to engage a culturally illiterate audience that has traditionally remained beyond the influence of the bourgeois novel. Like many of his characters, he supports Hibs.