Painted on the outside wall of Leith Dockers Club is a mural that depicts some of the wizened faces of the men who worked the port amid familiar haunts of this working-class district north of Edinburgh’s gilded city centre. Soon they will be joined by another of Leith’s favourite sons, Irvine Welsh, the writer and poet who, they felt, brought this neglected place to life once more.
It is 23 years since Welsh penned his masterpiece, Trainspotting, the ferocious and poetic depiction of an underclass that generations of the city burgesses had tried to pretend didn’t exist. The film of the book was made three years later and now, on its 20th anniversary, the director Danny Boyle and most of the original cast have come together to begin filming the long-awaited sequel. In locations around Leith, as well as some in Glasgow, Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller and the boys have been glimpsed playing their former selves with some gusto.
Related: Irvine Welsh: ‘I thought, what if Begbie was the most self-controlled guy in the room?’
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