Irvine Welsh was born in 1958 in Scotland. He grew up in the heart of Muirhouse's working-class neighborhood, dropped out of school at age sixteen, changed jobs many times until he emigrated to London with the punk movement. In the late 1980s he returned to Scotland, where he worked for the Edinburgh District Council at the same time as graduating from university and engaged in writing. His first novel, Trainspotting, had an extraordinary success, as well as his cinematographic adaptation.