Irvine Welsh to publish a new Trainspotting sequel, as his iconic characters look for love

Irvine Welsh is to publish a new sequel to his best-selling debut Trainspotting - which will see his iconic characters looking for love.

Author Irvine Welsh, pictured at Leith Theatre. Picture: Lisa Ferguson

Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie will be reunited again for a novel that will see them "fill their days with sex and romance” after leaving heroin behind.

The book, which Welsh says is set immediately after Trainspotting, will open in the late 1980s era as rave culture sweeps across the UK during the final years of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's reign.

Author Irvine Welsh, pictured at Leith Theatre. Picture: Lisa Ferguson

Men In Love, which will be launched in July, will also unfold in the run-up to the wedding day of Sick Boy.

To coincide with its publication, Welsh is planning to release an album of the same name with The Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra, which promises to "take listeners back in time to the raw power and real emotion of soulful discotheque music",

The main characters are expected to be in their mid-20s in Men In Love, which will be the fourth Trainspotting sequel Welsh has written since it was published in 1993.

Author Irvine Welsh, pictured at Leith Theatre. Picture: Lisa Ferguson

The first sequel, Porno, was said to have been set around ten years after the events in the first book, while further follow-ups The Blade Artist, which focused on Begbie, and Dead Men's Trousers, which killed off one of the main characters, were set at least 20 years after Trainspotting.

Welsh has also published a Trainspotting sequel, Skagboys, which was set several years before his debut. The sequel inspired two feature films directed by Danny Boyle and has sold more than a million copies in the UK to date.

An official announcement on Men In Love states: “Men In Love follows Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie as they leave heroin behind and find joy, and the hope of redemption, on the dance floor.

Trainspotting was a huge hit when it opened in cinemas in 1996.

“Each wants to feel alive in the closing years of Thatcher’s Britain, and they fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead. Taking in Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam and Paris, the group charges towards an unexpected event - Sick Boy’s wedding day.”

Welsh revealed he was planning to write a love story when he launched his most recent novel, Resolution, in Edinburgh earlier this year, but did not reveal that his characters from Trainspotting would be returning.

Trainspotting was released in 1996 and is now regarded as a classic of British cinema.

He said: "I’m writing a book about men in love, a kind of twisted romance, but I want to bring out a twisted disco album at the same time as the book.

"I think there’s a completely psychotic edge to romance. I think you can tell that anybody who writes about love and romance has got to be a nutter. So here I come.”

Men In Love is said to open with the characters "quite atomised and finding their own way, but still very much connected”.

Begbie and Spud are still in Edinburgh, Sick Boy is in London and Renton is in Amsterdam, where he fled at the end of Trainspotting, after stealing money from his friends after a drug deal they all become embroiled in.

Discussing the new book in an interview with The Guardian, Welsh said: "The baggage that they’ve accumulated together isn’t particularly conducive to them forming bonds and proper romance relationships with women.”

Welsh said the new book would show his characters having "big emotional lives".

He said: "Working-class people are generally just walk-on characters that speak in funny accents and entertain the bourgeoisie, who have these rich inner lives and who have all these internal conflicts."

Welsh has been developing a musical adaptation of Trainspotting in recent years. In an interview with The Scotsman earlier this year, he said: "I’m always looking back at Trainspotting.

“It’s so much part of the culture that people haven’t really let go of it and new generations are discovering it all the time. I’m kind of compelled to talk about it. It’s like having a sort of jakey best mate that you want to avoid who then suddenly he gives you a big wad of cash that he’s owed you for ages."