The Great Sea Cliffs of Scotland wins at Banff Mountain Book Festival
This month’s big news is that Scottish Mountaineering Press’s very first publication, The Great Sea Cliffs of Scotland (2020), has won the Mountain Image category in the Banff Mountain Book Competition, 2021. This competition is part of the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, an annual event in the heart of the Canadian Rockies that celebrates film, photography and mountain literature. Widely recognised as one of the most prestigious competitions on the international climbing scene, it brings together filmmakers, writers, publishers, editors, photographers, athletes, adventurers and readers from all over the world.
The Great Sea Cliffs of Scotland was one of eight winners selected from 153 entrants across several categories. Bernadette McDonald, a member of the competition’s jury panel, described the book as ‘a visual and literary gift’ and wryly noted that the ‘outrageous beauty’ of the photographs and thrilling, ‘lyrical prose’ had the jury ‘checking weather forecasts and flight schedules to Scotland’.
For those of you yet to read it, this sumptuous 256-page anthology takes a tour of the best climbing adventures on Scotland’s spectacular coastline, from the far-flung sandstone sea stacks of the northern isles to the granite playground of the Aberdeenshire coast via the ancient gneiss of the ragged Hebridean archipelago. The gripping exploits recounted by renowned pioneers and activists are brought to life with stunning, exclusive images from some of the UK’s best photographers and original poetry from Stuart Campbell.
The book’s author, Guy Robertson, is well known in Scottish climbing and is no stranger to mountain writing and storytelling. In addition to his acclaimed 2014 book The Great Mountain Crags of Scotland, several of his essays have been published in the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, the American Alpine Journal and UK climbing magazines. Guy remains at the forefront of Scottish winter climbing and is also a prolific rock enthusiast, with first ascents in the Alps, Norway, Peru, Africa, the Middle East and the Greater Himalaya.
In other news, our latest publication, The Fox of Glencoe by Hamish MacInnes, has been shortlisted for The Great Outdoors (TGO) magazine’s Outdoor Book or Writer of the Year Award, 2021.
TGO is the UK’s original hiking magazine and has been on the go for over 40 years. Its fiercely competitive annual awards are driven entirely by readers, and the Outdoor Book or Writer category is designed to recognise and showcase beautiful and compelling publications across a range of genres.
We’re thrilled that so many of our readers have enjoyed Hamish’s reflections on a lifetime of epic adventures and mountaineering achievements and have taken the time to endorse The Fox of Glencoe with their vote. Polling is open until 22 November 2021, so there’s still time to cast your ballot here: