Bernadette McDonald reads a passage from her award winning book Freedom Climbers, a collective biography of Poland's brilliant Himalayan mountaineers from the 1970s–1990s. The book was originally published by Rocky Mountain Books of Canada in September 2011. We will publish the UK edition in paperback and ebook on 20 February 2012. 

This video was originally recorded for and played at the Boardman Tasker Prize event at the Kendal Mountain Festival in November 2011 as sadly Bernadette was unable to travel from Canada as she had just undergone shoulder surgery.

In this passage from the book, one of the central characters Jerzy 'Jurek' Kukuczka has already completed the fourteen 8000m peaks, becoming the second person ever to do so (behind Reinhold Messner). Jerzy's summits were achieved either in winter or by new routes, sometimes both. He's now back on Lhotse with Ryszard Pawlowski on another attempt on the South Face. We'll let Bernadette take over from here...