Short listed for Boardman Tasker Award 1999

When John Cunningham was swept to his death off storm-tossed Anglesey in 1980, British climbing lost one of its greatest exponents and most forceful, yet enigmatic personalities.

Born in an elemental part of Glasgow in 1927, Cunningham's life was shaped by his background in an East End tenement, a working life in Glasgow shipyards and an eventual escape to the crags and ice gullies of Scotland, the wastes of Antarctica and the peaks of the Himalayas and the Western Alps.

Drawing on interviews with his contemporaries, friends in the legendary Creagh Dhu Mountaineering Club and his family, and containing previously unpublished photographs of first ascents, Creagh Dhu Climber is the story of a man whose personality and achievements continue to inspire but which have, until now, remained untold.

Above all this book is a record of a way - and philosophy - of life that no longer exists.