Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary edge of The Spectator, and my guest this week is the writer

Irvin Welsh.

30 odd years after his extraordinary book, Trainspotting, he has returned to the scene with a direct

sequel called

Men in Love. I mean, what is it that brings you back to these characters? Well, you said 30

odd years, Sam, and they have been very odd years indeed. But I think the thing is that I never

really left him. I mean, I've got a pile of notes and sketches and short stories

on my computer kind of train spotting file, and it's not enough. I need a theme to tie these

things to before I publish. There you go to guys to understand the world. I'm always writing

about them in some way or some form. I've got loads and loads and loads of stories and

sketches about them and I need something to galvanags me into writing a book about them and not just

finance but other things as well. I think about is there a theme that you're interested in exploring.

And what was interesting exploring was how people have all these decisions to make in their

20s.

You know, it's like the kind of social, economic system and our culture.

Until recently, that's kind of breaking down a bit now, but until recently it did force

us to make big life kind of long decisions about, you know,

are we going to have a romantic relationship? If so, are we going to live together? If so,

where about, are we going to buy a house or rent a house? Are we going to move around? What kind of

careers are we going to have? Are we going to have children? How many are we going to have, do we need to be near schools for them, how do we

finance the work, leisure kind of balance and what sort of life do we have? These are massive

...