Trainspotting and say, Pink Floyd’s Dark of the Moon are as relevant and accessible to new generations as they were to mine. I say sadly because the Internet has destroyed youth culture and ossified things from the past that are quality. Do you think it has the same or some effect on the current much spoken-about generation – the millennials? The book and the characters quite literally defined a generation in the 90s.

How would you describe the journeys of these four cult characters, drawing from the personal influences for each? If one were to summarise the premise of Trainspotting, T2, and Dead Man’s Trousers, one could say they are about four friends and their journeys.

Irvine Welsh will be at the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival, and in this email interview, he talks about taking a plunge into writing, adaptations of his work, and how Edinburgh has changed over the years. The underlying line of thought in Welsh’s books concerns the working class and the Scottish sense of identity, societal hierarchies, football, sex and the vices of drugs and alcohol. Other books chronicling the lives of these four friends followed - T2 (a re-packaged version of Porno) and the final instalment, Dead Men’s Trousers. They bring these characters (minus one), now in their 50s, together for what could be called the last hurrah. Its four main characters - Renton, Begbie, Spud and Sick Boy - found immediate resonance with a generation familiar with finding solace in drugs and a life of crime, which was a result of the political and economic situation prevalent at the time. Written by Irvine Welsh, published in 1993, and brought to life on the screen by Danny Boyle, it immediately caught the fancy of the 90s punk generation that identified with it instantly. If there is one thing you will read about the iconic book Trainspotting, it is that it defined an entire generation.

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