2026 Judges
The Judging Panel for the 2026 Boardman Tasker Award is:
Nandini Purandare (chair of judges)
Nandini is editor of the internationally renowned The Himalayan Journal (THJ) and President of the Himalayan Club. Purandare is an educator; a writer and editor for the Avehi-Abacus Project, which develops educational materials for schools across India. An economist by training, Purandare has worked as a consultant with several organizations and research centres. She is a devout reader of mountain literature and has hiked and travelled in the Himalaya for over 40 years.
Along with co-author Deepa Balsavar, she worked for over 10 years on The Sherpa Project, collecting oral histories from the forgotten climbing Sherpas of Darjeeling. The resulting book, Headstrap won the Boardman Tasker Award for Best Book on Mountain Literature 2024 as well as the Banff Climbing Literature Award 2024.
BRIAN HALL
Mountaineer, author, and filmmaker Brian Hall, started climbing at sixteen in the Lake District. After Leeds University and UCNW Bangor, mountaineering soon consumed his life, experiencing expeditions at the highest level in the Himalayas, Karakorum, and the Andes, including Everest (in winter), K2, Jannu, and Nuptse. He was Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Kendal Mountain Film Festival, in 1980 (until 2008). In recent years, Brian’s focus has been advising on safety, rigging, and location in the film industry, including the BAFTA-winning film Touching the Void.
In 2022, his memoir High Risk – Climbing to Extinction was the joint winner of the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature and won The Himalayan Club Kekoo Naoroji Book Award.
Recently retired but still a keen climber. Married to Louise, they became New Zealand residents, dividing their lives between the Southern Alps and the Peak District.
Tony whittome
Tony Whittome is a book publisher. For many years he was editorial director of Hutchinson and subsequently of Penguin Random House, during which time he published widely in fiction, poetry, politics and history and developed a list of award-winning climbing and mountaineering authors. Now retired, he still edits books for Penguin Random House and he has served on the boards of the Poetry Society and, under Philip Larkin, of the Poetry Book Society. He is on the arts steering board of Koestler Arts, the prison charity, where he judges its fiction awards.
For fifteen years he co-directed the Mountain and Wilderness Writing Program at Banff, which he founded in 2005 with the former Boardman Tasker judge Marni Jackson, and where he has had the privilege of working with an extraordinary range of exceptional writers. He has also twice been a book judge at the Banff Festival.
In past years Tony has climbed in the Alps and north Wales, trekked on Mount Athos and cycled across Europe on the pilgrimage to Santiago. He remains a keen mountain walker.
