If any of the Queen’s far-flung subjects resonated with her long reign it was the New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary, whose conquest of Everest with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay was announced to the world by The Times on the morning of her Coronation in 1953. Yet no member of the Royal Family will be present at the self-effacing mountaineer’s state funeral in Auckland on Tuesday.

New Zealand’s head of state will be represented by Anand Satyanand, her Governor-General, who is her resident representative in the country.

Some New Zealanders have taken the Queen’s decision as a snub to their national hero, who died in Auckland last week aged 88. Lewis Holden, chairman of the New Zealand Republican Movement, which favours severing the country’s link with the monarchy, said that the decision not to attend Sir Edmund’s funeral in person showed that the Royal Family “was not able to do the job for New Zealand”.

Helen Clark, the Prime Minister, was more understanding, saying in a radio interview that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, both in their eighties, could not be expected to undertake a 26-hour flight from London to Auckland at short notice.

Instead the Queen will host a memorial service for Sir Edmund, whom she knew well and met many times, at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, probably in April. Sir Edmund, knighted in the same year as his Everest triumph, was a Knight of the Garter and the service will include the ceremony of “laying up” his banner. Afterwards she will invite Sir Edmund’s widow and family to a private audience.

“This is a rare and special occurrence. It demonstrates the Queen’s sadness at his passing and her fondness for the man, whom she last met in Auckland in 2002,” a Palace spokeswoman said.

Questions were being asked last night as to whether a younger member of the Royal Family, such as the Prince of Wales, who has no other listed engagements next week, could not have undertaken the journey to bid farewell to a giant of 20th century exploration, whom at the time Britain almost tried to claim as one of its own, given that he was part of a British-led expedition.

Buckingham Palace insisted yesterday that the Queen had felt that the most appropriate person to represent her was a New Zealander, who will stand in for her both personally and officially. Neither the Palace nor Clarence House would say whether the Prince had been asked to represent the Queen at an event which is expected to bring the whole of New Zealand to a standstill. “There is always a problem about sending a less senior member of the Royal Family to events like this. People tend to say, ‘Is that the best you can do?’” a royal source said.

By custom the Queen does not attend funerals outside her own immediate family, that of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965 being an exceedingly rare exception. Even with the deaths of close friends she usually prefers to attend the memorial service rather than the funeral on the ground that her presence detracts mourners from thoughts of the deceased. The Prince of Wales has frequently represented her at the funerals of foreign statesmen, including those of King Olav of Norway, President Reagan and the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin.

The decision means that there will be no official representation from Britain apart from the UK High Commissioner to New Zealand, based in Wellington. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that its ministers attended such events only if invited, and none had been.

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