Latest news with #Trainspotting
Gulf Today
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Oasis, Adolescence: How the UK finally got cool again
Helen Coffey, The Independent If you're Gen Z or younger, you probably can't remember the last time the UK was cool. It was before your time, I'm afraid – a Nineties heyday embodied by Britpop bands such as Oasis and Blur, Richard Curtis romcoms, YBAs (Young British Artists) headed up by Damien Hirst and his provocative animals in formaldehyde, and Tony Blair's Labour Party finally booting the Tories out of power in 1997 after an 18-year stronghold. It marked a period of genuine optimism — a feeling epitomised by sexy smackhead Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) 'choosing life' at the end of Danny Boyle's Nineties masterpiece, Trainspotting – when British fashion, music and culture were the envy of all. A time when the country felt progressive, thriving and relevant. A time when, in fact, one might feel the tiniest bit justified in being 'proud to be British'. Ginger Spice was even able to wear a union jack mini-dress to the 1997 Brit Awards without the merest hint that she was making some kind of anti-immigration political statement. That same year, Katrina and the Waves won the Eurovision Song Contest on behalf of the United Kingdom with their uplifting ballad 'Love Shine a Light'. Since that golden era of Cool Britannia petered out, we've been sorely lacking in the trendy department. The Tories wrested power back from Labour again in 2010, introduced the chokehold of austerity, and clung on for the next 14 years. The flame of excitement prompted by the success of the 2012 London Olympics was comprehensively doused by the damp squib that was the Brexit referendum — and ensuing economic downturn — in 2016. Our street cred was further dented by dodgy Covid contracts and a succession of cringe-making leaders who ran the gamut from robotic to corrupt. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak: it's practically a four-way tie in the 'which of our prime ministers was the most embarrassing' race to the bottom. No, for a nigh-on a quarter of a century, 'cool' was not a word one could feasibly use to describe the British Isles – not without a knowing flicker of irony, at any rate. But now, all of a sudden, we might just be on the cusp of Cool Britannia Mark II. Now, for the first time in decades, might it be — whisper it — cool to be British again? Of course, the country has long continued to hold a certain charm for anglophiles the world over, but it was previously always our past, rather than our present, that captivated foreigners. Jane Austen adaptations of varying quality may have flown off the shelves; Downton Abbey may have garnered such global popularity that endless series continued to be made, regardless of the increasing 'jump the shark' implausibility that the Crawley family were barely ageing through the decades. But modern Britain, with its deflated economy and mortifying politicians, its littering and its rioting and its binge drinking, was an understandably unappealing prospect for all but the country's staunchest defenders. People wanted the Britain of bonnets and smouldering heroes in the mould of Pride and Prejudice's Mr Darcy or a topless Aidan Turner as Poldark. They did not want the Britain of The Only Way Is Essex. Yet it seems the tide might finally have turned. The signs that the UK's cultural cachet was about to experience an unexpected surge were already there, of course. No, Keir Starmer's thrashing of the Tories last year was far from the jubilant landslide of Labour in the late Nineties, but it at least represented some kind of hope after years in exile for those on the Left. The official trend and soundtrack for that summer – Brat summer – was orchestrated by unabashedly hip British musician Charli XCX, whose album emboldened a generation of young people to sack off curating a perfect Insta grid and stay out raving all night in yesterday's makeup. Even Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris got in on the action after Charli declared 'kamala IS brat' on social media. Now, 2025 seems to be the year when everything has coalesced – and people are once again loving the UK for her grittiness, rather than her prettiness. The Gallagher brothers, pivotal in Cool Britannia's previous iteration, have kick-started a frenzy of Britpop nostalgia single-handed with their reunion tour. Guy Ritchie's latest gangster series, MobLand, with its hard-as-nails London crime scene juxtaposed by picturesque Cotswolds manor houses, was an instant success for Paramount. Adolescence, a dark mini-series set in Yorkshire about a 13-year-old boy who murders a classmate after becoming radicalised online, is Netflix's most-watched show of the year and its second most-watched English-language series of all time. The show's standout performances earned Emmy nominations for Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Ashley Walters, as well as 15-year-old Owen Cooper, who made history by becoming the youngest ever nominee in the limited series supporting actor category. And then there are the celebrity endorsements that keep rolling in. 'Everything here is just better,' comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres recently said of the UK after moving here with wife Portia de Rossi following Donald Trump's re-election. 'The way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here.'
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
This week's literary fiction: MEN IN LOVE by Irvine Welsh, SEASCRAPER by Benjamin Wood, MIGRAINE by Samuel Fisher
MEN IN LOVE by Irvine Welsh (Cape £20, 544pp) In 2017, Welsh said he'd never write another novel about the characters from Trainspotting, but who truly believed him? Men In Love follows the old gang of heroin-addicted benefit cheats – Renton, Sick Boy and Spud, together with psychotic hardman frenemy Begbie – into the Nineties, each going their own way after Renton sneakily pockets the shared proceeds of a drugs heist. He's in Amsterdam, Begbie's in jail, Spud is trying to go straight and Sick Boy is prowling for sex... business as usual, then, as Welsh knits their stream-of-consciousness chapters around a farce involving Sick Boy's bid to worm his way into the heart of a civil servant's daughter. Cartoonish and often in terrible taste, it works, because these characters remain alive on the page, more than 30 years on. SEASCRAPER by Benjamin Wood (Viking £14.99, 176pp) I loved Wood's Eighties-set novel, A Station On The Path To Somewhere Better, the chilling story of a boy's catastrophic day out with his estranged dad, a set designer on his favourite TV show. Themes of illusory promise resurface in his new novel, another wrong-footing and enormously compelling coming-of-age narrative. Set in the early 1960s on the Kentish coast, it follows a stifled young man who lives with his mum and earns his keep by scraping shrimp from the beach, dreaming about a girl he doesn't have the courage to ask out. His fortunes change when a Hollywood director pays him an untold sum to scout locations for a new film. The deal isn't all it seems – but nor is this novel, which drifts from quiet lyricism into a weirder, more hallucinatory style as we delve deeper into the protagonist's haunted interiority. MIGRAINE by Samuel Fisher (Corsair £13.99, 192 pp) Fisher's third novel, a standalone follow-up to his 2022 climate dystopia Wivenhoe, transports us to a richly imagined near-future London battered by storms that cause mind-expanding headaches. The narrator, Ellis, having suffered his first migraine, roams the emptied streets in search of an ex-girlfriend who had them frequently. As he searches for her, accompanied by a shadowy bookseller who knows more about Ellis's past than he lets on, the novel portrays the social divisions and conspiratorial worldviews that take root as a result of the city's competing experiences of the mysterious chronic pain. If the texture of Fisher's speculative scenario holds attention, extra compulsion lies in the emerging story of lost love and buried guilt. Elegiac, languid, interrogatory, it resembles a cross between the cyberpunk of William Gibson and the psychogeography of Iain Sinclair.
Spectator
6 days ago
- Business
- Spectator
Soul suckers of private equity, Douglas Murray on Epstein and MAGA & are literary sequels ‘lazy'?
First up: how private equity is ruining Britain Gus Carter writes in the magazine this week about how foreign private equity (PE) is hollowing out Britain – PE now owns everything from a Pret a Manger to a Dorset village, and even the number of children's homes owned by PE has doubled in the last five years. This 'gives capitalism a bad name', he writes. Perhaps the most symbolic example is in the water industry, with water firms now squeezed for money and saddled with debt. British water firms now have a debt-to-equity ratio of 70%, compared to just 4% in 1991. Britain's desperation for foreign money has, quite literally, left Britain 'in the shit'. Gus joined the podcast to discuss further, alongside the journalist Megan Greenwell, author of Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream. (00:46) Next: why is MAGA so incensed over Jeffrey Epstein? Six years after he died, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is still haunting Donald Trump. Trump had vowed to release all files on various cases that attract conspiracy theorists – from JFK to Martin Luther King Jr. What makes the Epstein case different, as Douglas Murray writes in the magazine this week, is that the case was so recent and Epstein's ties with the elites, many of whom are still in power. Trump appeared to backtrack on releasing files relating to Epstein, prompting ire from the MAGA world, and there is now mounting cross-party pressure to uncover who knew what. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, sent representatives home early for summer, and there is even talk of Ghislaine Maxwell testifying. Why is the Epstein scandal such a lightning rod for MAGA rage? Douglas Murray joined the Spectator to discuss. The full interview can be found on Spectator TV. (15:49) And finally: are literary sequels 'lazy'? It's 'sod's law', says the Spectator's literary editor Sam Leith, that when a friend's book is due to be reviewed in the pages of the books section that you edit, the review will be bad. Mike Cormack reviews Men In Love by Irvine Welsh this week, calling the decision by Welsh to pen another sequel to Trainspotting 'lazy'. At the Spectator this made us ponder whether this is true of all literary sequels, and what motivates authors to stick with characters and stories that they know. Sam joined us to discuss further alongside Lucy Thynne, the Telegraph's deputy literary editor. (33:59) Hosted by William Moore and Lara Prendergast. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Megan McElroy.
STV News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- STV News
Men in Love: Irvine Welsh releases new Trainspotting sequel
Irvine Welsh has released a direct sequel to Trainspotting, more than 30 years after the cult novel's publication. Men in Love, released on Thursday, sees the return of beloved characters Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie. Irvine's fifth Trainspotting spin-off displaces 2002's Porno as the original's most direct sequel, and follows the misfit Leith crew as they attempt to replace drug addiction with 'love and romance' while they experience the heyday of rave culture in the late 80s and early 90s. The original novel quickly became a cult classic, and made a hugely successful transition from page to screen thanks to director Danny Boyle and up-and-coming actor Ewan McGregor, with a sequel released in 2017 reuniting most of the original cast. Men in Love will open in the late 80s, 'at the end of punk and just before acid house'. Getty Images The book's description reads: 'It is the late 1980s, the closing years of Thatcher's Britain. For the Trainspotting crew, a new era is about to begin – a time for hope, for love, for raving. 'Leaving heroin behind and separated after a drug deal gone wrong, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie each want to feel alive. They fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dance floor, with its promise of joy and redemption. 'Sick Boy starts an intense relationship with Amanda, his 'princess' – rich, connected, everything that he is not. When the pair set a date for their wedding, Sick Boy sees a chance for his generation to take control at last. But as the 1990s dawn, will finding love be the answer to the group's dreams or just another doomed quest? 'Irvine Welsh's sequel to his iconic bestseller Trainspotting tells a story of riotous adventures, wild new passions, and young men determined to get the most out of life.' The release comes ahead of a documentary of Welsh's life, which will close the Edinburgh International Film Festival on August 20. Reality Is Not Enough will follow the best-selling author at a 'crossroads' in life where he is 'acutely aware of his mortality and accepting that his hedonistic days are drawing to a close'. It is also said to explore the 'inner and outer life' of the writer, who was propelled to fame with his debut novel focusing on heroin addicts in Leith in 1993. From director Paul Sng, the documentary, which was previously titled I Am Irvine Welsh, has been described as a 'captivating piece of autobiographical filmmaking'. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Spectator
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Tedious, lazy and pretentious – Irvine Welsh's Men in Love is a disgrace
There are 32 years between the publication of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and his Men in Love – a gap roughly equivalent to that between Sgt. Pepper and 'Windowlicker' by Aphex Twin. Perhaps three cultural generations. It is disturbing, therefore, to find Welsh still pumping out further sequels to his spectacular literary debut. But whereas that had verbal fireworks, razor-sharp dialogue, superb character ventriloquism and a fearless examination of Scottish moral rot, Men in Love is – let's be frank – tedious, lazy, pretentious and simply bad writing. Under the influence of American Psycho, Welsh has had characters narrating their fleeting perceptions since Filth (1998), in the hope that accumulation will create meaning. But where Bret Easton Ellis is satirising the vicious lizard-brain petulance of the 1 per cent, Welsh now simply takes you with the narrator on increasingly pointless journeys. The result is entire chapters that feel redundant and anti-plots that seem to build to something before ending in irritating anti-climaxes. (The Renton-Begbie confrontation in 2002's Porno was so bad that I wondered whether a refusal to climax was a meta joke.) Trainspotting vibrated with malevolent vernacular energy, but the prequels and sequels have seen Welsh lose his ventriloquial gift. This was already apparent in Porno, where Nikki's speech at the end was pure authorial intervention as she tells us What It All Meant. From Skagboys (2012) onwards, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and even Begbie have been articulating their thoughts in increasingly florid sentences, as if Welsh were trying to impress us with his new-found vocabulary. But it doesn't impress. Of course, part of the pleasure of reading Welsh was how he combined the demotic and the cerebral. But the writing in Men in Love can be as clumsy and self-regarding as undergraduate poetry. For instance, Spud thinks that 'she should pure huv the vocabulary tae express hersel withoot recourse tae foul language'. Without recourse, aye? The once-fearsome Begbie, meanwhile: Now he was outside and it was Saturday, drifting into late afternoon, a time Begbie found replete with opportunities for violence. Potential adversaries were out, some since Friday after work. Many of those boys acquiring the delicious bold-but-sloppy combination that would service his chaotic outpourings. He found them replete, did he? He had chaotic outpourings, did he? And the sex writing – 'in languid, ethereal movements she groans in soft tones', for example – is excruciating. Another key weakness of Men in Love is how many earlier beats it replays. Sick Boy is involved with porn films and pimping; women magically fall under his spell; and he outplays a privileged male competitor (this time his father-in-law, a Home Office civil servant). Renton gets into nightclubs and DJ-ing. Spud is a romantic loser. Begbie is still psychotically aggressive. All of which we've seen in Porno, The Blade Artist and Dead Men's Trousers. The record is stuck. The heartbreaking thing is there's a good novel to be written about the punk/smack generation of the early 1980s encountering the ecstasy love-buzz period as the decade progressed. But Welsh has signally failed to tackle any of that. He could have taken them to Ibiza, the Hacienda or Spike Island, or considered the achievements and failures of the Love Generation Mk II. But no. It's another lazy retread. The impression one gets from Men in Love is that of Fat Elvis, sweating and unknowingly self-parodic in Las Vegas. Welsh desperately needs an editor with the guts to tell him this schtick isn't working any more. To quote Melody Maker on David Bowie: 'Sit down, man, you're a fucking disgrace.'
