Summit

On May 29, 1953, John Hunt’s expedition finally reaches the summit of Mount Everest. The Baron of Llanfair Waterdine does not accomplish this feat in person. It is two other members of his team who plant the flag of the United Kingdom at the peak. Neither of them was born on the British Isles. One is a New Zealander: Edmund Hillary; the other, a Sherpa: Tenzing Norgay. The news takes four days to reach London, where it competes on the front pages of the papers with the coronation of Elizabeth II as Queen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland and of Her Other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.