Sir Ranulph Fiennes set foot on the summit of Everest in the early hours of today, two failed attempts and a heart attack after he first tried to conquer the mountain in 2005.

The explorer is the first man to cross the North and South Poles and climb the world's highest peak.

He is also, at 65, the first British pensioner to reach the summit of Everest.

Arriving at the summit just after 1am UK time, Sir Ranulph, who is attempting to raise £3 million for the cancer charity Marie Curie, said in a phone call to the BBC: "We came to the summit as dawn broke. It was very, very cold."

Times Archive, 1953: Everest is conquered

A message was received last night that E. P. Hillary and the Sherpa Tensing Bhutia had reached the summit of the mountain

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He added in a statement that climbing Everest had long been a personal goal.

In contrast to the huge publicity that surrounded his previous two attempts in 2005 and 2008, Sir Ranulph chose to keep his latest expedition low-key.

Only those closest to him knew that the usually publicity-friendly record-breaker had begun yet another assault on the mountain three weeks ago – after declaring last year that he would never try again.

A spokeswoman for Marie Curie said: "He wanted to do it quietly with no fuss. He only just failed last year – he got to within a short distance of the summit but had to turn back from exhaustion.

"So he decided he wanted to keep it very low-key without all the build-up and media attention of last year."

Before his first attempt at Everest in 2005, doctors said it was likely that Sir Ranulph, who had a double heart bypass in 2003, would die on the mountain. He made it to within 350 metres of the summit when a heart attack forced him to abandon the climb.

On his return to the UK he described to The Times the moment he realised he was having a heart attack.

“I was going up a rock on a fixed rope when it started," he said. "It was as if somebody was trying to tear the wire apart which had done up my ribs [after the bypass]. My immediate thought was that I’m going to have a massive heart attack again within seconds."

He chose to descend rather than push on because, he said, he would have been a "silly fool" to die on the mountain.

This time, like his 2005 expedition and the climb last year which he had to abandon through exhaustion, he would have had to take even more care than that of other mountaineers on Everest.

He would have been on oxygen while sleeping since arriving at advanced base camp and he would have been forced to stop whenever his pulse rate rose.

At those altitudes, the extra strain on the cardiovascular system of a fit man is three times that at sea level, even when only sitting still. The strain on that of a man who had already suffered two heart attacks could easily have been fatal.

After he turned back last year, Sir Ranulph said: "I won't be returning to Everest. It's a seven-week trip – last time I had a heart attack, this time bad timing and weather scuppered my chances. I think any third attempt would be bad luck."

But he changed his mind and now he can add Everest to his eccentric list of achievements, which include running seven marathons on seven continents in seven days in 2003 and climbing the treacherous north face of the Eiger in 2007.

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