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24 | 2025
L’Écosse 30 ans après Trainspotting

Scotland 30 Years after Trainspotting
Edited by David Leishman
Études écossaises n° 24 / 2025
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ISBN 978-2-37747-539-1

Since it was published in 1993, Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting has made a lasting mark on Scottish culture thanks to the vivacity of its raw demotic narration and its unflinching portrayal of a drug‑ravaged Edinburgh underbelly. Despite its grim subject matter, the novel helped re‑energise Scottish literature and popular culture in the pre‑devolution era. Reinforced by stage and film adaptations, as well as multiple sequels, Trainspotting has since gained iconic status as a defining element of modern Scottish identity. Yet, 30 years on, how recognisable is today’s Scotland compared to the nation it depicted?

Rather than adopting a strictly literary focus, this issue of Études écossaises uses Trainspotting as a lens to explore the evolution of contemporary Scottish life between 1993 and 2023. The theme “Scotland 30 Years after Trainspotting” enabled contributors to probe the cultural, economic, and political shifts experienced on issues central to the novel, such as urban decay, poverty, substance abuse, as well as the very conception of what it means to be Scottish. Trainspotting’s wide theme of a nation trapped in stasis and subservience within the UK thus also prompts analysis of the dynamics of Scotland’s popular and political culture today.

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