{"id":7892,"date":"2012-11-17T11:45:32","date_gmt":"2012-11-17T11:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/?p=7892"},"modified":"2021-01-17T13:13:59","modified_gmt":"2021-01-17T13:13:59","slug":"andy-kirkpatrick-scoops-boardman-tasker-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/andy-kirkpatrick-scoops-boardman-tasker-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Kirkpatrick scoops Boardman Tasker Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Cold Wars by Andy Kirkpatrick has won this year’s Boardman Tasker prize for mountain literature. Ironically the prize came the day after Andy announced on Twitter that he was giving up trying to write for a living. The winner was announced on Friday 16 November at the Kendal Mountain Festival by Bernard Newman, chair of the judging panel who described Cold Wars<\/a> as, \u201cA second autobiographical volume, describing epic winter ascents in the Alps and Patagonia and the conflicts of the lifestyle with family life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing on his blog<\/a> before winning the prize, Andy Kirkpatrick said, “The problem for me is that although I find writing the most thrilling, creative and rewarding thing I\u2019ve ever done, it comes at such a high cost it really isn\u2019t worth it.” After describing how the process of writing can often be difficult he also explained that the financial benefits didn’t really add up, “financially it doesn\u2019t work unless you have about ten books on the go at once, as what the author gets is pretty small (13% of the trade price), plus you\u2019re writing in very small market, where selling 4000 books is seen as fantastic. Psychovertical has now probably sold nearly 20,000 copies and yet I\u2019ve not even paid off my advance yet from Random House. Many years ago Andy Cave told me you don\u2019t make much money as a writer and I didn\u2019t believe him, but he was right. You can\u2019t just be a writer.”<\/p>\n

The other books which reached the prestigious shortlist were:<\/p>\n

Here, there and everywhere\u2026<\/a> by Jim Curran, \u201cA revealing and at times deeply emotional autobiography that spans much of the history of UK climbing from the 1960s to the present.\u201d<\/p>\n

Into the Silence<\/a> by Wade Davis, \u201cA hugely comprehensive history of the 1921, 1922 and 1924 British expeditions to Everest, culminating in the loss of Mallory & Irvine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Challenge of K2<\/a> by Richard Sale, \u201cA highly detailed account of the complex history of climbing on K2 from the mid nineteenth century up until 2011.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fiva: An Adventure That Went Wrong<\/a> by Gordon Stainforth, \u201cA ripping yarn of a climbing epic on Store Trolltind in the Romsdal, in 1969.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wild Within<\/a> by Simon Yates, \u201cA further autobiographical account of climbing adventures in the world\u2019s remote ranges, including the Cordillera Darwin, Alaska and Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prize of \u00a33,000 commemorates the lives of Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker and is given to the author or co-authors of an original work which has made an outstanding contribution to mountain literature.<\/p>\n

On 17 May 1982 Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker were last seen on Mount Everest attempting to traverse The Pinnacles on the unclimbed North East Ridge at around 8250 metres. Their deaths marked the end of a remarkable era in British mountaineering.<\/p>\n

Peter and Joe left two legacies. One was their great endeavour, their climbs on high peaks with bold, lightweight innovative methods which included Dunagiri, Changabang, Kongur, Everest and Kangchenjunga. The second and more lasting achievement were the books they wrote and left behind.<\/p>\n

This literary legacy lives on through the Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain literature set up by family and friends in 1983.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cold Wars by Andy Kirkpatrick has won this year’s Boardman Tasker prize for mountain literature. Ironically the prize came the day after Andy announced on Twitter that he was giving up trying to write for a living. The winner was announced on Friday 16 November at the Kendal Mountain Festival by Bernard Newman, chair of the judging panel who described Cold Wars as, \u201cA second autobiographical volume, describing epic winter ascents in the Alps and Patagonia and the conflicts of the lifestyle with family life.\u201d Writing on his blog before winning the prize, Andy Kirkpatrick said, “The problem for me…<\/span> <\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7895,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7892"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24329,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7892\/revisions\/24329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}