Trainspotting 25 years on

Choose life

When the film Trainspotting was released in 1996, there were 244 drug-related deaths in Scotland. In 2019 there were 1,264 – and Covid’s impact hasn’t helped any. So why are so many wrong choices not being made? We speak to leading campaigners who say it’s a problem of government policy, and also Irvine Welsh on why his most famous work is still relevant.

Sophia Loren

In an incredibly rare interview, screen icon Sophia Loren tells The Big Issue about how her difficult childhood growing up in war-torn Naples informed her latest role in The Life Ahead – her first in over a decade where she plays a holocaust survivor looking after a young African immigrant – and how we can find hope in the most uncertain times.

Hugh Bonneville

Downton Abbey star and Paddington’s best friend Hugh Bonneville is this week’s Letter To My Younger Self where he talks about his life-long love of theatre.

Also inside

• Our story about hundreds of people queuing in the snow in Glasgow for food went viral – we speak to those who’ve been left with nowhere else to turn
• How can you protect your mental health when facing redundancy or spiralling debts? We ask the experts
• John Bird plans a post-pandemic tour of the libraries that made him
• In Fact/Fiction – can streetlights cause cancer? The truth is illuminating
• And our vendor expert is, of course, Robin Price with more tips about spotting trains!

Plus even more than that!

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