The Trainspotting author on his new novel’s transgender storyline, using humour to give his readers a break and the debt he owes to Evelyn Waugh
Irvine Welsh, 63, grew up in Muirhouse, north Edinburgh, and lives in Oxfordshire, having spent most of the 2010s in Chicago and Miami. The Long Knives, his 13th novel, is a sequel to 2008’s Crime, which screened last year as a six-part BritBox series with Dougray Scott in the lead role of DI Ray Lennox. In the new book, Lennox is tasked with solving the murder of a Tory MP found castrated in a Leith warehouse. Welsh spoke as shooting was about to begin on its television adaptation; other business in hand included Trainspotting’s forthcoming debut as a West End musical, two separate documentaries about his life (“like buses, you know”), a recently launched record label and getting married for a third time.
Did you always plan to write a sequel to Crime?
Doing the TV show [of the first novel] piqued my curiosity. We were telling the story about Lennox’s family and this thing that happened to him as a kid, and since it was doing well and there was a chance for another season, I wrote about what would happen if he found the guys who abused him. But the novel I wrote then will be coming out next year, because it seemed to leave space for another book in between to develop the family drama and really set up the payoff. I thought if I could get it done in time, the show’s second season could be based on The Long Knives instead and it is. So having not had a book out since 2017, they’re now coming thick and fast because I did nothing in lockdown except write.
The Long Knives by Irvine Welsh is published by Jonathan Cape (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
