Read the 2023 Chair of Judges’ speech by Matt Fry

2023 BT PRIZE SPEECH 

Hello everyone, my name is Matt Fry.  I’m the Chair of Judges for the 2023 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature.  I am honoured to be here this evening. As part of Joe Tasker’s extended family, I remember the occasions that I would attend this awards ceremony, as a child with my grandmother, back in its early days at the Alpine Club. Being here this evening for the 40th anniversary is a real privilege.

I’m here this evening to present the shortlist of five outstanding books that celebrate the spirit of adventure, exploration and discovery in the high places of the world.  This is also a changing world, and as we celebrate the winner of this prestigious award, it is important to reflect on the challenges that we face as a global community.  The threat faced by the environment is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and we must all do our part to protect it. The mountain environment, in particular, is a fragile ecosystem that requires our attention and care.  In addition to environmental concerns, we are also facing a challenging political situation around the world.  The climate crisis, economic inequality, and social unrest are just a few of the issues that loom large at this time.  The Boardman Tasker Award represents, perhaps more than any other literature award, the opportunity not only for escapism, but to embrace the power of literature to inspire change.  This is a theme that we kept in mind throughout the judging process.  All of the judges finished this experience feeling incredibly hopeful for the future of writing in this fascinating field.

I’m visiting Kendal from London, a city with a distinct lack of mountains, which is one reason I loved escaping into all 21 of the books submitted to the prize this year. 

As someone who works in the publishing industry, I read a lot of books but the quality of all the submissions this year was so impressive, and not one fell into the abyss of the dreaded slush pile. Each had their merits, but from the outset, all three of us judges were agreed that in this special year for the Boardman Tasker prize, we wanted to push the boundaries of modern mountain literature. Indeed, as Peter Boardman memorably said ‘the only true failure would be to not explore at all’.

I want to thank my fellow jury members, Jo Croston, who’s travelled from Canada to be here this evening, and Paul Pritchard, who sadly couldn’t make the trip from Tasmania, for being such good companions on this reading expedition. Thank you also to Steve and Janet Dean for all their amazing efforts in continuing to make this award such an important event.

Together, we managed to navigate our way to the most remote corners of the world – all without having to leave the house.

The shortlist didn’t come easily and there was plenty of lively and good-natured debate between us. Each time a package full of books dropped through the letterbox, in our various corners of the globe, we would find ourselves transported anew to summits, peaks and valleys.

We explored the melting world of the High Himalaya with memorable narratives from Clive Rowland in his book, The Ogre, and James T. Lester’s Return to the Scene of the Climb.

There was the beautifully designed and packaged One Man’s Legacy, introducing us to the legendary Scottish climber Dr. Tom Patey.  We all agreed we’d learnt a new word (or is it a phrase?) in ‘SHRALPINISM’, thanks to author Jeremy Jones, and all discovered an urge to visit Bulgaria’s magical-sounding Mesta Valley, courtesy of Kapka Kasabova’s Elixir.  We also all agreed that none of us would ever look at water in quite the same way, after reading Amy Jane Beer’s mesmerising book, The Flow. 

The five books we selected for this year’s prize are not only remarkable for their literary merit, but also for their contribution to the culture and history of mountaineering and its related disciplines.  Each book, in some way, was also selected with an eye on the future, and with a nod to the journey that this award has taken so many on since its conception. From the outset of our judging journey, we always wanted to keep in mind the ethos that ran through Peter and Joe’s own writing, that of always looking ahead, pushing boundaries and taking risks, and we hoped they would be pleased to see five equally worthy and boundary-pushing titles selected in this, the 40th anniversary of the award.  Without further ado, let me introduce you to the shortlisted titles and their authors.

 First, we have Sherpa: Stories of Life and Death from the Forgotten Guardians of Everest by Pradeep Bashyal and Ankit Babu Adhikari. This book is a rare and intimate portrait of the Sherpa people, who have been the backbone of countless expeditions to the highest peaks in the Himalayas.  Sherpa raises important questions about the future of this proud and resilient people. It is a book that challenges our stereotypes and assumptions, which is something that we felt strongly about when judging.

Next, we have Unravelled: A Climber’s Journey Through Darkness and Back by Katie Brown. Katie takes us on a journey of recovery and redemption, finding new meaning and purpose in her life through climbing.  As my fellow judge Paul Pritchard remarked, there is almost an element of voyeurism in the book – the reader cannot help but turn the page to find out where the author’s journey would lead her.  Unravelled is a one-of-a-kind climbing book, and struggles with addiction, control and eating disorders are more common in climbing than we would like to think. This book is not only a timely testament to this truth, but a visceral rendering of the author’s life.

Next, we have The Hidden Fires: A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd by Merryn Glover.  We all enjoyed retracing Nan Shepherd’s footsteps in the Cairngorms and appreciated a fresh and contemporary perspective on Shepherd’s vision and voice.  The Hidden Fires is a book that enriches and deepens our understanding and appreciation of one of the most original and influential nature writers of the 20th century. 

Next, is British Mountaineers by Faye Rhiannon Latham. We loved the bold, risk-taking and thoroughly contemporary take on a classic text of British mountaineering. Throughout our judging we kept remarking how we felt we had been taken on a dream-like tour of F.S. Smythe’s original 1942 work. This unique book is quite unlike anything submitted to the prize before.

Finally, we have Closer to the Edge by Leo Houlding. This book is a thrilling and candid account of the life and adventures of one of the most daring and charismatic climbers of his generation.  This was a roller-coaster ride of highs and lows, successes and failures, joys and sorrows. 

Ladies and gentlemen, these are the five books that have made it to the shortlist of the 2023 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. Each of them is a worthy contender for the prize, and a testament to the quality and diversity of mountain literature today.  I congratulate the authors and the publishers for their excellent work, and I thank them for sharing their stories with us. 

And so, the moment you have all been waiting for. In a unanimous decision, the 2023 Boardman Tasker prize goes to….

Unravelled by Katie Brown

2023 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature - The Winner

The 2023 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature goes to Katie Brown for Unraveled.

Congratulations Katie!

Read the judges speech by Matt Fry here.

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A compelling, raw and honest memoir from one of the most successful climbers of her generation. Brown’s bold book gives us a no-holds barred insight into her early life, her struggles with mental health and eating disorders, all against the backdrop of her meteoric rise to climbing fame as a teenager in the mid-90s. The question of ‘what happened?’ is constant and fascinating theme throughout this unforgettable read and shows how climbing can provide escapism in its rawest form.

Recognized as one of the greatest female rock climbers in history, Katie Brown began climbing at age 12 and soon dominated national and international competitions. She mastered the discipline of climbing hard outdoor sport routes quickly, often on the first try. Retired from climbing, Brown is a writer and mom. Find her on Instagram @katiebrownclimbs

John Boardman finds a letter from Dorothy’s Boardman Tasker treasures

Mum corresponded with judges while they were involved and for many years afterwards. Given this time of year, I thought the feedback from one of the judges from our earlier years, in a letter to Mum, might be of interest.

"Looking back over the last year I am very glad that you asked me to help. The whole affair was far more interesting and stimulating than I'd expected. In curious ways I felt it enabled me to get to know Pete again.  Even though he'd have understood but not necessarily agreed with our result."

Regards, John

Joint Winners 2022 - Helen Mort and Brian Hall reflect on the Boardman Tasker Award

Helen Mort

My first introduction to the world of mountaineering was through mountain literature - I encountered books about climbing before I did my first rock climbs in the Peak District. Nothing ever quite matched the thrill of being immersed in those stories. The Boardman Tasker Award is a vital part of our cultural landscape and a hugely important prize within the mountaineering community. It truly honours the legacy of Joe Tasker and Pete Boardman. 

As a former judge of the prize and a former winner, I know how tough  the decisions are and how much the BT Award means to authors. 

I'm really excited to see poetry on this year's shortlist too! 

Each year, the prize acts as an inspiration to those who have a story to tell and contributes to us uncovering new, perhaps overlooked perspectives. It has a vital role in defining what mountaineering literature can be.

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Brian Hall - A Few Words on Joe & Pete

Joe and Pete were two powerhouses of world mountaineering from the mid 70’s to the early 80’s when they were part of an elite group making the change from heavyweight to lightweight alpine style. Their names are etched on the peaks they attempted. Changabang, Kangchenjunga, Kongur, K2 and Everest to name a few. 

I knew Joe much better than Pete. For Joe, mountaineering filled his life and when he was not on an expedition he would be organising equipment, progressing his interest in mountain film making, writing books and lecturing. In 1980 we climbed together while trying to make a winter ascent (without supplementary oxygen) of Everest as part of an eight person British team. What an expedition!  We were literally blown off the mountain at our high point of around 7500 metres.  Yet it was a success; we all came back alive and without suffering frostbite, despite temperatures down to minus 50 C. 

Joe was an enigma. When not on an expedition he rarely climbed and unlike Pete he enjoyed a party. I vividly remember late night wild times above his climbing shop, Magic Mountain, in Hope, Derbyshire. True to form on Everest he arrived the least fit of the team, yet at the end he was the strongest. More than anyone else I knew he had this unbelievable ability for his mind to push his body to the extreme. 

The close-knit world of mountaineering lost two of its greatest characters high on the North East Ridge of Everest in 1982. At the time the ridge was unclimbed and alone they were pushing hard towards the summit with no support of fixed ropes or supplementary oxygen. Unbelievable in the context of what happens today on 8000 metre peaks. Although I was shocked and saddened by their deaths, I also realised they were doing what they loved and wanted to do. It was their passion and the desire to reach the summit which outreached the risks involved.

At that time, I read with wonder Joe’s book ’Savage Mountain’ and Pete’s ’The Shining Mountain’ thinking - ‘How could they be so talented to pen these two classic books of mountaineering?’ It is a tribute to their many talents that the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature was established to help celebrate their lives and stimulate excellence in mountain writing.

Brian Hall  July 2023

Joint winner of the 2022 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature, with 'HIGH RISK: Climbing to Extinction’ & Winner of The Himalayan Club Kekoo Naoroji Award 2022
And the NZMFF Best Mountain & Adventure Narrative 2023

Stephen Venables - winner, shortlisted author and interviewer reflects on the Boardman Tasker Award

I never met Pete and Joe, but I have often climbed with Dick Renshaw, who was with them on Everest in 1982 and who had to leave the expedition after suffering a mild stroke, just a few days before they disappeared.  So I felt a connection.  In any case, I had of course followed their climbs closely and I loved their posthumously published books, ‘Sacred Summits’ and ‘Savage Arena’. I had always wanted to write something myself and was thrilled in 1985 when Maggie Body at Hodder & Stoughton accepted my unsolicited book proposal and sent me a contract. She was a brilliant editor who had cut her publishing teeth on the final books of Eric Shipton and had more recently been a regular editor to both Chris Bonington and Peter Boardman, so it felt rather an honour to have her as mentor.

‘Painted Mountains’ came out in October 1986.  At the time I was working for Luke Hughes’ furniture business in Covent Garden and I was sanding some oak table tops when the workshop phone rang and Maggie asked, ‘are you free on October the 18th? You’ve won the Boardman Tasker Prize’.  So I will always associate BT with the smell of sawdust and tannin-stained fingers.   As for the award ceremony, which in those days took place in London … what an honour to have all three judges there – filmmaker Jim Curran, poet, critic and climber Al Alvarez and as chairman of the judges, the legendary W.H.Murray, whose speech was as dry and Scottish as you would expect.  Rumour had it that I was not their initial choice, but I think they changed their minds to encourage a first time writer.  Whatever the background politics, I was thrilled to win.

Since 1986 the winning book has always remained a closely guarded secret until the day of the prize-giving ceremony.  Three times I have sat with fellow BT Shortlisters, listening anxiously to the chairman’s speech, hoping that I might be the lucky one.  (One year in particular, when our family was particularly strapped for cash, I really could have done with £3,000 tax free!)  Alas not.  But such is the growing prestige of the BT brand, that just to get onto the shortlist gives a book a nice boost.

I have been rather idle on the book-writing front in recent years, but I have had the pleasure, several years running, of interviewing the shortlisted authors.  As they have often travelled a long way, sometimes across the Atlantic, on the off chance of winning, it’s nice that each shortlister has a chance to talk a bit about his book.  Or her book: the increase in female authors is one of the good ways the prize has broadened over the years.  Subject matter, too, has broadened, with less emphasis on hardcore mountaineering, although I felt that the cycling book which won a few years ago – excellent as it was – was only tangentially connected with mountains.  With five or six shortlisters to interview, the chats are inevitably short, and I try to keep them light-hearted.  I also try to encourage very short readings, because authors are usually hopeless at reading from their own books.  However, there are exceptions. For pure boundary-pushing entertainment the prize has to go to Canadian veteran Barry Blanchard reading a passage about being stuck at a high camp on the West Ridge of Everest, during a storm, pleasuring himself with one hand while in his other hand holding the radio to talk to the woman he fancies at base camp.  Being Barry, he got away with it.  And he did win the Boardman Tasker prize.

Boardman Tasker at 40: Reflections from Terry Gifford

I don’t believe that the rigorous literary critic Al Alvarez actually held mountaineering literature in much of a high regard. When I asked him to talk about his favourite climbing book at the 14th International Festival of Mountaineering Literature in 2000 he chose to talk about Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s polar epic The Worst Journey in the World. After the judging of the third and fourth BT awards was over Al Alvarez sold his 20 or so books to pay for his poker stakes in his weekly games with Ian McNaught-Davies. Al went on to write a book about poker, Risky Business, as he had about that other risky business of hanging out with the climbers around Julian Vincent Anthoine in Feeding The Rat. The best line I ever heard from Mo Antoine was at a BT award ceremony at the Alpine Club. The Alpine Club poet and eccentric, Ronnie Wathern, used to sit in a corner on such occasions and play the Uilleanpipes, working the bellows vigorously with his elbow. Mo said to him, ‘Is it dead yet? I should get it by the throat.’ 

​In 1992 I judged the BT with Ronnie and we became friends, climbing together in Majorca where Ronnie had built an unusual house in 1968 in Deià to be close to his poetic mentor Robert Graves. In the street one day Ronnie introduced us to Graves’ long-suffering widow Beryl who was out shopping. Ronnie’s eclectic list of friends also included Paddy Maloney of The Chieftans, Don Whillans and the philosopher R. D. Laing. On a climb of the soaring ridge route ‘Sa Gubia’ in Majorca,Ronnie, who climbed in a Harris tweed jacket, would produce offers of sustenance from different pockets. There were three of us, led by my regular partner Norman Elliot, so we spent quite some time on the stances where Ronnie would quote poetry in between saying, ‘Would you care for an orange? A clove of garlic, anyone?’ 

​Ronnie and I judged the BT with Livia Gollancz, the professional musician whose playing of the French horn eventually gave her such dental problems that she had to give it up and work at her father’s publishing house. At Victor Gollancz Ltd Livia, who had been a member of the Ladies Alpine Club since 1966, developed a modest but notable list of mountaineering books, including Joe Brown’s The Hard Years, one of the first she acquired as managing director of the company after her father retired. Livia was clearly a formidable woman, but with a gentle voice and an open mind. When we met in her house in Highgate I remember the impressive collection of alpines in her garden. 

Like Janet Adam-Smith (‘I’ve never had any problems being a woman!’), Chair of the BT in 1988, Livia did not see any need for positive discrimination for women writers, even though, in their time, mountaineering literature consisted almost entirely of male voices and masculine narratives. One of the most striking changes of the last forty years is the increase in the number of entries to the BT by women authors and the corresponding number of female winners. Whilst the entries simply reflect publishing trends, it could be argued that the BT’s choice of female judges may have offered some kind of encouragement to women writers. Indeed, the first three of such judges were Janet Adam-Smith, Lucy Rees and Livia Gollancz, appointed from the third award onwards. The very first BT winner in 1984 was a woman, Linda Gill,for Living High: A Family Trek in the Himalayas. Then it was not until the ninth award in 1991 that the prize again went to a woman, the novelist, Alison Fell, for her Mer de Glace. Since then, women have won with biographies and memoirs, perhaps the most radical, risky and riveting of the latter is the most recent joint winner, Helen Mort’s A Line Above the Sky: On Mountains and Motherhood (2022).

This book is a marker of just how far the possibilities of what can be explored in women’s climbing writing have come since the first award to Living High: A Family Trek in the Himalayas. In a 2006 essay on the inhibitions holding back British mountaineering literature I wrote that ‘only in the last decade has British climbing writing begun to emerge from what might be called “the Rock and Ice era” [that] created an image of men who said little, wrote nothing (certainly not poetry), but acted eloquently’ (Reconnecting With John Muir, p. 158). This slight exaggeration was aimed at the masculine fear of expressing emotions, represented in the minds of climbing magazine editors in particular, by poetry. Poetry remains a challenge for BT judges since in forty years only one poetry book has been awarded the prize, Charles Lind’s long narrative poem An Afterclap of Fate: Mallory on Everest (2006). In her book Helen Mort writes: ‘If there is no risk in my writing, no fear, there is no pleasure. I have to make myself feel uncomfortable, take chances in the way a mountaineer does, calculating and recalculating, pitching their frail body against the wind. In risk, we feel most alive.’ For those who have not yet read A Line Above the Sky, in this book Mort is intimate and unsparing in examining her experience of pregnancy, giving birth and the first years of motherhood as a climber and fell runner fascinated by the experience of Alison Hargreaves who sits on her shoulder throughout as her ‘ghost companion’. 

Of course, the Alison Hargreaves narrative inevitably leads towards the death of her son, Tom and here the parallel ‘ghosting’ story might have becomeuncomfortable. Mort recounts watching reports of Tom’s disappearance and search efforts hourly through the night whilst breastfeeding her three-month-old son Alfie. Her emotional investment is clear. Later, while Alfie is safe at pre-school, there is a knock at the door. ‘I could not shake the instinct that something must have happened to him’, Mort writes. In fact, it is an acquaintance calling to warn her that her face has been superimposed on a body on a porn site – the ultimate crossing of the line of her own body. In writing about this Mort ‘takes back control’. Women, she says, have always been judged by the world by more than their subjective selves, as in the duality of mother/climber in Alison Hargreaves’ case. Mort’s conclusion to this book is to reflect upon the multiple roles of the women who came before her, her present friends and, as poet and novelist, her fictional characters: ‘If women are always to be doubled, surveyor and surveyed, then let us be multiple. Let us stand so close that we seem to merge together, the dead and the living, the real and the fictional.’

It is hard to avoid a comparison with Mort’s joint winning book, Brian Hall’s High Risk: Climbing to Extinction. The lives and deaths of eleven men are remembered by Hall, the survivor, like John Porter, of a generation of climbers who balanced style against risk and ultimately lost what they had won. But it has to be said that Hall, who unlike Mort, is not a poet and wordsmith, captures more of character and emotion than would have been the case, perhaps, forty years ago. His grief is heartfelt, his character judgements open and honest, and his personal responsibility unflinchingly examined. As the Chair of judges Marni Jackson said, the writing achieves a spirit of ‘humour, affection and respect’ that counterbalances the grim conclusion to each chapter. 

​From the second International Festival of Mountaineering Literature, we invited each year thereafter the Chair of judges at the BT to deliver the adjudication address which had been given only a few months previously to a small audience at the Alpine Club in London. The aim was to support the BT by offering a public discussion of the judgement and a reading from the winning book. Without exception the judges undertook this exposure unflinchingly, relishing the discussion and ready to respond to a pointed Ken Wilson question. Well before the days of Kendal Mountain Festival, writers also welcomed reaching a bigger audience. (They were not originally invited to read from their winning books after the announcement. A quick retreat to The Carpenter’s Arms followed by a long celebration was the norm.)Regularly in the audience at the festival were the mothers of Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker who stayed for the whole day, seemingly fascinated by the writing displayed and debated in a culture to which their sons were major contributors and to which they had substantially added by creating the BT award.

Each year the BT shortlist offers a snapshot of the advances in approaches to adventure writing that I’ve been suggesting. In 2020 I published, in a book titled Walking, Landscape and Environment, a chapter that read the five shortlisted books of 2016 as each engaging in different ways with elements of dark experience within what might seem pastoral journeys. In this chapter, ‘Mountaineering Literature as Dark Pastoral’, I argued that these five books which I’d been judging in my second stint, this time with Graham Desroy and Helen Mort, each touched upon, or had implications for, what is now more widely known as the Anthropocene. As our environmental crisis deepens it is salutary to see that ‘the best literary work […] the central theme of which is concerned with the mountain environment’, as the BT defines its constituency, engages with the greatest of cultural and political challenges that we face.

Katie Ives makes this point in her 2020 Chair’s speech, one which any aspiring mountain writer would benefit from reading on the BT website (another great resource enriching our culture). The values illustrated in this speech by quotations from very different books should offer a guide to any would-be entrants for this award. Katie quotes Dave Cook’s critique of climbing writing which we commissioned for the first festival in 1987 and which became a manifesto for all further 21 festivals (Orogenic Zones, 1994, pp. 7-13). Dave called for more varied voices, including women and people of colour, for less obvious sources of inspiration, for acknowledgement of the ‘interconnections’ between experiences in the mountains and the rest of life, and to reassert ‘some of the values of humanity and fellowship against the imperial colonisation of the hills’. It is great to hear a BT judge celebrate the fact that some of Dave Cook’s ideals have been realised in the last 40 years and that we can all benefit from this ourselves if we only read the BT shortlist or at least the BT winners. Indeed, after 40 years, something good has come out this. 

Cooky would say that there has to be more to come.

Terry Gifford  July 2023

Paul Pritchard reflects on the Boardman Tasker Award

Paul Pritchard with Stephen Venables at the Boardman Tasker Award 2022

Two time winner, and one of this year’s judges, Paul Pritchard reflects on the Boardman Tasker Award.

‘The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on’

Dennis Gray with Pete Boardman

‘The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on’
Omar Khayyam

The Boardman Tasker Literary Award, founded in 1983

Both Peter and Joe were close friends of mine, the first worked with me at the BMC from 1975 until 1978, and the latter I knew from his arriving at Manchester University to read Sociology. Two entirely different personalities; Peter a classicist, Joe somewhat a revolutionary. Both dedicated mountaineers. I enjoyed many a cross office discussion with Peter as to who were our favourite writers, and he would be fired by the established English set, I favoured the American beats as they were tearing the house down. But Joe had a different approach, he would arrive, plonk himself down in my office and he would love to discuss the meaning of everything. Something he had well practised as a student at Ushaw catholic seminary, training to be a priest from 13 years of age until 20, when he became a dustman before entering higher education. 

Thus, they were both unusual but different characters, but their deaths high on the North East Ridge of Everest in 1982, left we who were their friends on how to memorise them. They had both achieved so much in their short lives, outstanding climbs; in Peter’s case the South West Face of Everest 1975, and Joe such as the North Face of the Eiger in winter, would anything we proposed be appropriate? Both had written outstanding books, in Peter’s case ‘The Shining Mountain’ and Joe ‘The Savage Arena’.

After much thought we came to the view that a literary award, aimed at mountain skewed volumes would be the best way to hold their memories and keep alive this interest to the fore. And so, in 1983 the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature was launched at the Alpine Club in London. Like any new venture this took time to establish itself, but over the years due to the dedication of so many volunteers, and the Boardman & Tasker families this award this has become recognised as the prime such in its field. And so many people now wish to attend the award ceremony that it was agreed to move north in order to hold this in conjunction with the Kendal Film Festival each November. More and more entries are arriving from abroad, and thus the international reputation of the award has also been well recognised, and thus it is not unusual for the BT, as everyone knows it as, to feature amongst its short list many writers from the English-speaking world.

Long may this continue, although it means so much extra work for hardworking secretary!
Dennis Gray
Former Trustee.

Steve Dean writes... about double award winner Jim Perrin

The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature was established in 1983, but the prize was not awarded that year as the judges felt that none of the entries were of sufficient merit. In 1984, a joint award was made to Doug Scott & Alex Macintyre for The Shishapangma Expedition and to Linda Gill for Living High.

The first individual winner came in 1985, Menlove. The Life of John Menlove Edwards by Jim Perrin.  Menlove Edwards was a major figure in the development of Welsh climbing in the 1930’s and was a contemporary of Colin Kirkus and Jack Longland. Jim’s book gives a wonderful overview of climbing in Wales in the 1930’s & 40’s, but also tackles the great complexities and conflicts in Menlove’s life. A very talented psychiatrist, he was also homosexual at a time when this would have made life extremely difficult.  Jim handles the story of Menlove’s life, his sad decline into mental illness, and his suicide at the age of only forty-eight in 1958, with commendable understanding and a deep sense for the loss of a highly intelligent man, a talented writer and someone well loved in the climbing community.  In my opinion, this book is still one of the very best biographies in respect of the climbing world, to be published.

In 2005 Jim Perrin became the first author to win the BT Award for a second time. The Villain: The Life of Don Whillans was joint winner that year with Learning to Breath by Andy Cave. In this case, Jim took on the thankless task as so many people in the climbing community had a fixed image of how Don was. Jim describes in detail Don’s early life growing up in Salford and then becoming one of Britain’s finest ever mountaineers. However, the nature of Don’s character created many conflicts and difficulties in his life although he became something of a working-class hero to many climbers. His superb ascent of Annapurna’s South Face with Dougal Haston in 1970 brought Don great fame, but he was destined to only live until 1985 when he died aged only fifty-two. Jim handles the decline of Don’s life with skill and not a little compassion. Don was a complex man and there is a sense that the negative side of his character brought about his early death. Jim paints a very detailed picture of Welsh climbing in the period after the last war, and Don was a giant figure in that story.

Both Menlove and The Villain are required reading for anyone wishing to understand the development of climbing both in Snowdonia and further afield.

Steve Dean
Secretary of the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature

Congratulations to Helen Mort!

Helen Mort at Kendal Mountain Festival 2023

Huge Congratulations to Helen Mort, joint 2022 winner of the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature on winning the grand prize at Banff Mountain Film & Book Festival.