It is impossible not to feel sympathy for those trapped in the confines of this life, and to feel admiration for those who make their way out of it. Glasgow is named Europe’s Murder Capital, driven by a violent territorial gang and knife culture. In the housing schemes of adjacent Lanarkshire, Scotland’s former industrial heartland, wee boys become postcode warriors. Ultimately, I finished the book feeling hope. In Scotland University is free and for so many of our youth that is a lifeline to a better future. Alongside that, they are resilient and have a good sense of humour which helps deal with all the negative that they have to deal with. Things might not be great but there are resources (external and internal) there which make me think all is not completely lost. I was engrossed from start to finish. Graeme Armstrong is a major new talent and I cannot wait to discover what he does next. His bestselling debut novel, ‘THE YOUNG TEAM’, is inspired by his experiences, and was published by Picador in 2020. It won the Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and was Scots Book of the Year 2021. It is currently being adapted for screen by Synchronicity Films.

In April 2023, Granta included Armstrong on their "Best of Young British Novelists" list, [5] [6] an honour presented every ten years "to the twenty most significant British novelists under forty." [7] Awards for Armstrong's writing and broadcast media

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Fans of Graeme Armstrong's The Young Team were thrilled to learn that their favourite novel will soon be available on TV.

Although this wasn’t my scene or generation, I still get it and can respect and relate to it in most ways. I am familiar with the dialect and some of the words and phrases had me laughing, especially the ones I haven’t heard in years. But let’s be honest the vast majority of potential readers, especially those outside of Scotland’s central belt, are going to find this an incredibly difficult read. And unlike the film version of "Trainspotting" there are no subtitles available for the Americans and others who will struggle, and yet somehow a part of me really likes the idea of that. Graeme Armstrong is a Scottish writer from Airdrie. His teenage years were spent within North Lanarkshire's gang culture. He was inspired to study English Literature following his reading of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting at just sixteen. Alongside overcoming his own struggles with drug addiction, alcohol abuse and violence, he defied expectation to read English as an undergraduate at the University of Stirling; where, after graduating with honours, he returned to study a Masters' in Creative Writing.Azzy is as vulnerable as any young man, suffering in silence when asked to express his feelings: “A’m a young Scottish male n A’m supposed tae be hard as nails.” When he falls for the “subtle n feminine” Monica, he’s confronted by adult emotions for the first time and the insurmountable barrier of class. Meeting Monica’s university mates, he feels them judging “ma family, ma prospects, ma financial status n ma intelligence” . By the end, the non-standard English forges a dazzling poetry of its own The morning newsletter arrives every day before 9am and the evening newsletter, manually curated by the team, is sent between 4pm and 5pm, giving you a round up of the most important stories we've covered that day. It’s also the reason why Armstrong is about to publish his debut novel, The Young Team, a work of fiction but very much based on his own experiences in an Airdrie gang as a teenager. The novel follows its protagonist, Azzy, across three turning points in his life: aged 14 and new to gangs, then 17 and struggling with a drug addiction, and finally, aged 21, off drugs and trying to move on. “Me and Azzy are the same person in some respects and in other respects, we’re completely different,” explains Armstrong. “He’s a fictional entity but a mouthpiece for me to narrate my own experiences especially when it comes to violence and mental health and suicide and trauma.” I’ve got different shelves for different things. I’ve got a nonfiction shelf, a Scottish social realism shelf and a general fiction shelf.

Armstrong’s influences are varied, from movie director Ken Loach to the books of David Keenan, an Airdrie author who wrote “about the punk band landscape of the 1970s and 1980s and it’s weird, narcotic and beautiful. He writes like a Russian master but is from just up the road.” Another, less obvious source of inspiration was provided by 2001 PlayStation game Max Payne. Our conversation comes full circle as Armstrong contemplates how his school days shaped his future, Trainspotting aside. “When I started telling teachers I was going to study English at university it was met with healthy scepticism. One teacher said there was too much reading for someone like me and another told me to just leave school. But I hung on.” RTS Scotland Awards 2022 | Winners". Royal Television Society. 31 October 2022 . Retrieved 1 September 2023.

The ones that have really left an impact on me recently: Sally Rooney, both of her books, Conversations With Friends and Normal People. It’s outside my normal sphere of reading but it’s really, really tremendous writing. Very sparse but so accomplished. Kerry Hudson’s book To ny Hogan… and her memoir Lowborn. Jenny Fagan, The Panopticon, that left a huge impression on me. I’ve not been doing as much reading as I would like, with all this work. My reading pile by my bed is turning into a Jenga tower.