Of all the achievements that seemed to make the year 1953 such an annus mirabilis for the United Kingdom — the Coronation of a young Queen Elizabeth II, the regaining of the Ashes after 20 years and the wresting of the world airspeed record from the Americans — none, perhaps seized the imagination of the public so vividly as the ascent of Mount Everest on May 29 of that year by Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.

In an era in which exploration, travel, tourism and the internet have so thoroughly shrunk the world, making Everest, too, comparatively familiar terrain, it is difficult to re-create the sense of unassailable mystery and menace represented in those days by the world’s highest peak.

From the moment in 1892 that the mountaineer and surgeon Clinton Dent had declared: “I do not suggest that it would be wise to ascend Mount Everest, but I believe most firmly that it is humanly possible to do so,” the challenge to human endeavour was inescapable, whatever the cost in life and health might be. The first British expedition, in 1921, had also witnessed the first British fatality, when Alexander Kellas died from heart failure exacerbated by dysentry before even making it to the mountain.

The disappearance of Irvine and Mallory in 1934, last seen by their colleagues, still striding bravely upwards on the mountain’s skyline before cloud blotted them from view, was just one more poignant tale from the catalogue of valiant failed attempts which added to the mythology of attempted ascents as the years went by. Eric Shipton, later to be replaced at the head of the 1953 expedition, had made several attempts on the mountain, the first (and the fifth British expedition) as early as 1935.

The volatile politics of the Himalayan region only added to to the difficulties. In 1947 the Nepalese Government had finally relaxed its ban on foreigners entering the country, thus allowing ascents from that country, while in 1950 the Chinese had seized Tibet, interdicting any attempts on the peak from there.

In the end, after one of the best prepared and, under John Hunt, most resolutely led, expeditions to that date, it was for Hillary and Tenzing to achieve the fame of being the first men in the world to stand on Everest’s summit on May 29, 1953. From that moment of glory, Hillary’s career opened out into a lifetime of adventure and of widening interest.

He remained seemingly untouched by any of the fame that accrued to him. His own laconic summary of his active life as merely a “constant battle against boredom” only gave part of the picture and was typical of his innate modesty and of his dislike of cant.

Edmund Percival Hillary was born at Auckland, New Zealand, in 1919 into an old-established farming family. His mother, who had been a teacher, insisted on him remaining at Auckland Grammar School until he was 18, but after an unproductive two years at university he was allowed to come home to the open air life he loved, to work on the family bee farm. All his life Hillary described himself as an “apiarist” and remained in partnership with his brother in the business.

Physically he developed his great strength after a slow start as a small and shy child, but by the time he was called up for war service, in 1943, he was strong enough to upset the day’s work programme by moving a dump of artillery shells in half the time allotted for the task. In the Second World War he served with the Royal New Zealand Air Force from 1944 to the end of hostilities, as a navigator of Catalina flying boats on reconnaissance patrols over the Pacific.

Hillary was an experienced climber in both the New Zealand and European Alps when, in 1951, he and his friend, George Lowe, with two others. embarked on an expedition to the Garwhal Himalaya. The party returned to base to receive an invitation for two of them to join Eric Shipton’s Everest reconnaissance, then on its way out to the Himalayas from England. Hillary and Earle Riddiford were the lucky ones, and from a point on Pumori, Shipton and Hillary had a view of Everest rising out of the Western Cwm, from which they were able to envisage a route up the mountain from Nepal. In the following year Hillary and Lowe accompanied Shipton’s Cho Oyu expedition and were picked as members of his team for the 1953 assault on Everest.

The substitution of Colonel John Hunt (later Lord Hunt, obituary November 9, 1998), who was then unknown, for Shipton as leader of the expedition caused hard feelings which might have come more into the open had it not been for Shipton’s dignified withdrawal and his continued friendship with Hillary and other team members. In the event the decision to appoint Hunt instead of Shipton was justified by the skill with which the former handled his large team of the world’s most expert climbers, each with his own strong and disparate individuality. Hunt from the first regarded Hillary as a “very strong contender” for the summit.

He was, Hunt recorded, “quite exceptionally strong and abounding in a restless energy, possessed of a thrusting mind which swept aside all unproved obstacles”. After the return, only 500ft short of the summit, of Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing went into action and reached the summit at 11.30am on May 29, 1953. They spent just 15 minutes there, during which Hillary took Tenzing’s photograph, before descending.