Irvine Welsh
| Irvine Welsh | |
|---|---|
Irvine Welsh 2004 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival
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| Born |
27 September 1957 Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Alma mater | Heriot-Watt University |
| Genre | Novel, play, short story |
| Literary movement | Modernism, post-modernism |
| Notable works |
Trainspotting, The Acid House Filth Porno |
| Website | |
| www |
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Irvine Welsh (born 27 September 1957) is a Scottish novelist, playwright and short story writer. He is recognised for his novel Trainspotting, which was later made into a film of the same name. His work is characterised by a raw Scots dialect and brutal depiction of Edinburgh life. He has also written plays and screenplays, and directed several short films.
Irvine Welsh was born in Leith, the port area of the Scottish capital Edinburgh. His birth record states that he was born in 1957, though it has been widely reported that it is actually 1951. When he was four, his family moved to Muirhouse, in Edinburgh, where they stayed in local housing schemes. His mother worked as a waitress. His father was a dock worker in Leith until bad health forced him to quit, after which he became a carpet salesman; he died when Welsh was 25. Welsh left Ainslie Park High School when he was 16 and then completed a City and Guilds course in electrical engineering. He became an apprentice TV repairman until an electric shock persuaded him to move on to a series of other jobs. He left Edinburgh for the London punk scene in 1978, where he played guitar and sang in The Pubic Lice and Stairway 13, the latter a reference to the Ibrox disaster. A series of arrests for petty crimes and finally a suspended sentence for trashing a North London community centre inspired Welsh to correct his ways. He worked for Hackney London Borough Council in London and studied computing with the support of the Manpower Services Commission.
Welsh returned to Edinburgh in the late 1980s, where he worked for the city council in the housing department. He then studied for an MBA at Heriot Watt University.
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