‘The winner of the 2024 Kekoo Naoroji Award is Catherine Moorehead for Mountain Guru: The Life of Doug Scott, published by Birlinn Limited, Edinburgh. This comprehensive biography charts the life of one of the most outstanding British mountaineers of all time. Scott, who died in 2020, was the first Englishman to the summit of Everest, on Chris Bonnington’s pioneering South-west Face expedition. However Scott’s reputation rests not only his bold climbing but on his decades of humanitarian work as the driving force behind the charity Community Action Nepal. Taken together with a turbulent personal life and strident campaigning for traditional values in climbing, Scott’s is an extraordinarily full and varied story. Pulling all these strands together has been no mean feat. In Mountain Guru, Moorehead has added a significant body of work to mountaineering’s rich history’ Stephen Goodwin, Chair of the Jury, 21/3/24
