Katharine Smith – författare

In 1965, Alan Scriven's life was changed forever by ten days in the Shropshire hills.

The Longmynd Adventure Camp was set up in the 1950s by Shropshire policeman Bill Williams, to provide a small group of boys from the poorer areas of the industrialised West Midlands with fun, adventure, and experience of the countryside.

Alan Scriven was one such boy and his first experience of Camp in 1965 changed his life. He went on to volunteer at the Longmynd Adventure Camp, forming a lifelong bond with Bill and eventually taking the role of ‘Skipper’ himself.

In recounting the history of the Camp, Alan provides a thoughtful and evocative account of his own experiences, as a boy and an adult. His passion and generosity are evident throughout, as is his sense of fun.

Sadness and disappointment sit alongside laughs and it is easy to see how much this Camp meant to so many and what an experience it must have been for the boys, some of whom had never seen the sea before their day at the seaside (a regular feature of each ten-day Camp).

This is the story of a wonderful act of generosity which developed year on year, with the Camp eventually purchasing its own land becoming a registered charity.

As the years progressed, however, rules and regulations were becoming tighter and sadly the Longmynd Adventure Camp, staffed entirely by volunteers, found itself on an unavoidable collision course.

Everyone needs to feel they fit in somewhere, and Stasia hadn’t found that place yet. Nobody is more surprised than her to find it in a world of goblins, trolls and faeries, and that some of them would become her best friends.

Through danger at the waterfall, tragedy at a funeral and getting trapped in a burning building, Stasia has her new friends by her side. But when her mum is being held hostage by gangster goblins, she knows that she is the only one who can save her.

When Coche Inciarte boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 on Friday 13th October 1972, he planned to sit next to his best friend Gastón Costemalle at the back of the plane. But another boy got there just ahead of him, and Coche found a seat further forward.

Ninety minutes later, Gastón was gone - sucked out of the back of the plane along with several others when the plane struck a peak in the Andes. Miraculously, twenty-nine passengers - members and friends of the Old Christians rugby club - survived the initial impact.

Stranded in the mountains for seventy-two days, Coche and his companions endured one of history's most extraordinary struggles for survival. Several died of their injuries and eight were killed in an avalanche that trapped the remaining boys in the broken fuselage for three days. Developing gangrene in one leg, Coche was rendered largely immobile. Unable to contribute to the more physical tasks, he made it his mission to raise the spirits of his fellow survivors through humour, love, and support.

Coche survived the Andes, but only just; and in this uplifting and thought-provoking memoir - written in memory of his friend Gastón - he brings alive his time on the mountain and reflects on the profound effect that it has had on his life, and on what it means to be human.