Edmund Hillary - A Biography

Michael Gill was a 22-year-old medical student in 1959 when he followed up on a newspaper statement that Sir Edmund Hillary was looking for additional climbers for his next Himalayan expedition. As a climber, photographer, doctor and writer, Michael was subsequently invited on nearly all the Hillary expeditions through to the last of them in 1977, a jet boat adventure up the Ganges River, and became a close friend of Sir Edmund’s. Edmund Hillary: A Biography is Michael’s third book, following Mountain Midsummer, a mountaineering autobiography, and Himalayan Hospitals, an account of the experiences of the doctors and other volunteers who worked for Hillary’s Himalayan Trust between 1961 and 2002. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

• Introduction 1 A pioneering heritage 2 Percy goes to Gallipoli 3 Growing up in Tuakau and Auckland 4 ‘The most uncertain and miserable years of my life’ 5 Escape into the Air Force 6 Harry Ayres teaches Ed the craft of mountaineering 7 The New Zealand Garhwal expedition and the Shipton cable 8 Everest Reconnaissance 1951 9 Everest from Tibet, 1921 and 1922 10 Mallory and Irvine, 1924 11 The 1930s, a decade of disillusion 12 Lessons on Cho Oyu, 1952 13 The Swiss get close, 1952 14 Organising Everest, 1953 15 ‘We were on top of Everest!’ 16 ‘The most sensible action I’ve ever taken’ 17 ‘A somewhat disastrous journey’ into the Barun Valley 18 Employment opportunity in the Antarctic 19 Scott Base 20 ‘Hellbent for the Pole’ 21 Beekeeper in search of a better-paying occupation 22 The Silver Hut expedition 23 Makalu unravels 24 Three new careers 25 Repaying a debt 26 The best decade of Ed’s life 27 A plane crash ends two lives and blights another 28 Killing time making films 29 Ocean to Sky, the last big expedition 30 Reconciliation 31 The last two decades Epilogue Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index

'By the time he died in 2008, Hillary had become a figure of international renown not simply for his Everest record but for his efforts to give something back to Nepal. He was an almost mythic figure in his native New Zealand. Michael Gill’s book helps to strip away the myth to reveal a rounded, complex human being.' – Times Literary Supplement