The Corridor Wins 2025 Boardman Tasker Book Award
The jury unanimously said The Corridor by Iain Peters deserves this year's top prize
The Corridor, a memoir by Iain Peters, has won the 2025 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature. The announcement was made at the 2025 Kendal Mountain Festival. The judges, Rehan Siddiqui, Nandini Purandare and Brian Hall, awarded The Corridor unanimously.
The Corridor is a deeply personal and candid memoir. In it, Iain Peters recounts how climbing and his love for wild places became his refuge, and ultimately a path to healing, after surviving childhood sexual abuse. He explores the lasting impact of that trauma on his psyche and relationships, and shows how the mountains offered a means to rebuild a life grounded in resilience, hope and fulfilment. In an interview with the BMC, Peters said, “In many ways, climbing saved my life and sanity.”
While the other six shortlisted works ranged from polar expeditions to historic journeys, the judges singled out The Corridor not for polished design or mainstream appeal but for the emotional power and honesty of its writing. As Siddiqui noted, “Our final choice is not a conventionally good-looking book. It feels self-published. At first sight, without much thought to design. But the cover photo shows a corridor of darkness leading to the light, the relevance of which only comes clear after reading the book. The writing of this book was an immensely brave undertaking.”
The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature was established in 1983 in memory of climbers and writers Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker. It honours books that make an outstanding contribution to mountain literature. For more info on the Boardman Tasker visit here, and visit Peters’s website here.
