Choose Life Choose Leith


Book Description

Much more than transgressional entertainment, Irvine Welsh's book Trainspotting and its derivatives is a window into the social mayhem that was everyday life in one of the most deprived areas in 1980s Britain. Thatcherism. Greed. Poverty. Heroin. HIV. Disenfranchised youth. In the back garden of posh, prosperous Edinburgh, Leith had the lot. For 20 years, Bell has interpreted Trainspotting on the streets of Leith for locals, tourists, aficionados and academics. In this book, a critical analysis of Trainspotting – the book, the play, and the film – he splices well-researched erudition with street-level wisdom and lived-experience testimony to tell the story behind the story. This new edition refocuses Trainspotting as a creative chronicle of the early years of the ongoing and uniquely Scottish drug death culture.




Choose Life. Choose Leith.


Book Description

By examining the book, the play and the film, Choose Life. Choose Leith. both critically analyses the Trainspotting phenomenon in its various forms, and contextualises the importance of the location of Leith and the culture of 1980s Britain. Looking in detail at the history of Leith, the drug culture, the spread of HIV/AIDs, and how Trainspotting affected drug policy, Leith and the Scottish identity, the book highlights the importance of Trainspotting. Choose Life. Choose Leith. acts as a reference book, a record of the times and a background as to the history that led to the real-life situation and the publication of the book.




Trainspotting


Book Description

"The best book ever written by man or woman...deserves to sell more copies than the Bible."--Rebel, Inc.




Sod's Law


Book Description

To every explorer with his map upside down, to every air-traffic controller suddenly receiving Magic FM through his headphones, to every astronomer whose new planet turns out to be a bit of bran-flake on the eyepiece of his telescope, Sod's Law says: you are not alone. Sam Leith tells the hilarious—and painful—stories of the unsinkable boat that sunk, the unbeatable horse that lost, and the fireproof theater that burned to the ground. Sod's Law demonstrates that the entire universe is actually set up to ensure that your toast always lands butter side down and, what's more, that it lands precisely where the cat has shed hair all over the carpet. In this age of doubt, fewer and fewer of us are able to believe that a higher power takes an interest in our fate. This book reassures us that indeed it does—and that that higher power is hell bent on buggering things up. Only by laughing heartlessly at the misfortunes of others can we make ourselves feel better. Sod's Law enables us to do just that.




Faith in the Voting Booth


Book Description

Faith in the Voting Booth by National Association of Evangelicals leaders Leith Anderson and Galen Carey will help you clarify your own positions in light of your faith before you enter the voting booth. Anderson and Carey show that biblical wisdom is surprisingly relevant to today’s complex political issues. Each voting decision should be thoughtfully and prayerfully approached. This book does not tell you how to vote. Instead it will help you resist clever campaign slogans and television ads designed to make you angry or afraid. Faith in the Voting Booth provides general principles to guide you in 2016 and for years to come. As informed faith leaders, Anderson and Carey not only identify the issues but also help you reflect biblically on how to vote. It is a book that will keep people of faith up to date and ready to vote with confidence and wisdom.




The Hungry Years


Book Description

A story of food, fat and addiction that is both funny and heart-wrenching: it will change the way you look at food forever




Skagboys


Book Description

Chronicles the misadventures of Mark Renton and his friends as they cope with economic uncertainties, family problems, drug use, and the opposite sex in 1980s Edinburgh.




I'll Try Anything Once


Book Description

The eye-opening story of one woman's incredible appetite for life: the memoirs of Prue Leith, judge of C4's GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF and former judge of BBC2's GREAT BRITISH MENU. Now fully revised and updated, including Prue falling in love and marrying again in her 70s. 'What a terrific tale it is - of a South African girl who could stand the heat and made the kitchen into a remarkable career' Telegraph Prue Leith describes herself as greedy in all senses of the word. Cook, caterer, restaurateur, food writer, journalist, novelist, businesswoman, teacher, television presenter, charity worker, lover, wife and mother, she has certainly been greedy for life. Prue came to London in the early 1960s and, not long afterwards, opened Leith's Restaurant. By the mid-seventies she was a food columnist on the Daily Mail, had published several cookbooks and opened Leith's School of Food and Wine. But it wasn't all work. Prue writes with honesty of her love life, her longing for children, the birth of her son, the adoption of her daughter and much else besides. In this fully revised and updated edition she tells of how she met, fell in love with and married John Playfair as well as her exciting new role as a judge on Great British Bake Off. Prue's down-to-earth attitude to life and her remarkable energy are an inspiration to anyone.




Trainspotting


Book Description

In 1996 Trainspotting was the biggest thing in British culture. Brilliantly and aggressively marketed, it crossed into the mainstream despite being a black comedy set against the backdrop of heroin addiction in Edinburgh. Produced by Andrew Macdonald, scripted by John Hodge and directed by Danny Boyle, the team behind Shallow Grave (1994), Trainspotting was an adaptation of Irvine Welsh's barbed novel of the same title. The film is crucial for understanding British culture in the context of devolution and the rise of 'Cool Britannia'. Murray Smith unpicks the processes that led to Trainspotting's enormous success. He isolates various factors – the film's eclectic soundtrack, its depiction of Scottish identity, its attitude to deprivation, drugs and violence, its traffic with American cultural forms, its synthesis of realist and fantastic elements, and its complicated relationship to 'heritage' – that make Trainspotting such a vivid document of its time. Although it heralded a false dawn for British film-making,Trainspotting is, Smith concludes, both authentically vernacular and yet transnational in its influences and ambitions. In his afterword to this new edition, Murray Smith reflects on the original film 25 years after its release, and its 2017 sequel T2: Trainspotting also directed by Boyle. Smith also considers Danny Boyle's subsequent directorial career, with highlights including Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony.




Dead Men's Trousers


Book Description

The International Bestseller from the author The New York Times called "blisteringly funny" — it's the wild and wooly crew from Trainspotting back for one last adventure You don't need to have seen the blockbuster movie—nor read the earlier mega-bestselling books—to get what's going on in Dead Men's Trousers: Four no-longer-young men who constantly think back to their bawdy, drug-filled youth together on the streets of Edinburgh, decide they want to join forces for one last caper. Careful what you wish for... "Manages a sort of ragged glory, a life-affirming comic energy . . . A whooping last hurrah for the Trainspotting gang." —The Guardian "Crackles with idiomatic energy and brio." —Publishers Weekly Mark Renton is finally a success. He now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms, and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with life. Then he runs into his old partner in crime, Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated artist in Los Angeles, and doesn't seem interested in revenge. Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, Sick Boy and Spud are intrigued to learn that their old friends are back in town, and concoct a new scheme for them all . . . Which is when things start to go horribly wrong. The four men, driven by their personal histories and addictions, circle each other, confused, angry, and desperate. One of these four will not survive . . . Which one is wearing Dead Men's Trousers? Fast and furious, scabrously funny, and weirdly moving, this is a spectacular return of the crew from Trainspotting.