Edmund Hillary – A Biography

The extraordinary life of the beekeeper who climbed Everest

Paperback: ISBN: 978-1-83981-025-1
544 pages
Author: Michael Gill
Publication date: 7 Mar 2019

Edmund Hillary – A Biography is the story of the New Zealand beekeeper who climbed Mount Everest. A man who against expedition orders drove his tractor to the South Pole; a man honoured around the world for his pioneering climbs yet who collapsed on more than one occasion on a mountain, and a man who gave so much to Nepal yet lost his family to its mountains.

The author, Michael Gill, was a close friend of Hillary’s for nearly 50 years, accompanying him on many expeditions and becoming heavily involved in Hillary’s aid work building schools and hospitals in the Himalaya. During the writing of this book, Gill was granted access to a large archive of private papers and photos that were deposited in the Auckland museum after Hillary’s death in 2008. Building on this unpublished material, as well as his extensive personal experience, Michael Gill profiles a man whose life was shaped by both triumph and tragedy.

Gill describes the uncertainties of the first 33 years of Hillary’s life, during which time he served in the New Zealand air force during the Second World War, as well as the background to the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953, when Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit – a feat that brought the pair instant worldwide fame. He reveals the loving relationship Hillary had with his wife Louise, in part through their touching letters to each other. Her importance to him during their 22 years of marriage only underlines the horror of her death, along with that of their youngest daughter, Belinda, in a plane crash in 1975. Hillary eventually pulled out of his subsequent depression to continue his life’s work in the Himalaya.

Affectionate, but scrupulously fair, in Edmund Hillary – A Biography Michael Gill has gone further than anyone before to reveal the humanity of this remarkable man.

Also available as an ebook:

"No one who knew Ed Hillary during the first thirty years of his life would have predicted that great fame lay ahead”, writes Michael Gill, his latest biographer. Yet the Hillary who stares out from the cover photo – his long, angular face stubbled and sunburnt, his gaze cool and appraising – looks exactly the kind of character who would achieve feats requiring great determination and stoicism. – Alan McNee, Times Literary Supplement

Edmund Hillary – A Biography is a meticulously researched and well-written book. The strength of a biography, as opposed to an autobiography, is that it often allows the writer to tell of great people as they are seen by their family, friends and peers. Michael has very successfully recorded how Ed was seen as such a determined and remarkable man. He has presented a heartfelt tribute to a dear friend who inspired and changed the lives of so many. Edmund Hillary died in 2008. Michael’s wonderful book leaves the reader in no doubt that the close-knit community of exploration had lost a famous pioneer and that the world had lost a great man. – Noel Dawson, The Great Outdoors magazine

For the climber, the book will be essential reading, but there is much here too in the more general appeal of a life well spent, in making the utmost of one's talents, and in man's pursuit of goals at the limit of human endeavour. – Mike Bailey, Footless Crow

As I discovered from reading Michael Gill's new biography of Ed Hillary, there was much more to this man than just being the first person to climb Everest. – John Burland, the Wharfdale and Airedale Observer

This is an amazing book, so detailed and compellingly told, it really is worth reading whether you regularly read books on mountaineering or not. – The Strawberry Post

This is a fascinating biography of a remarkable man – from beekeeper to mountaineer, explorer and philanthropist, author and diplomat. If you like your biographies meaty, you won’t starve with this well-researched and comprehensive account of the lantern-jawed, rugged Antipodean on the cover. – Amazon reviewer

Ed Hillary – A Biography is well illustrated throughout, initially with black and white photographs and then mainly colour from the time after Everest. Endpapers show large scale maps of Nepal & South Asia and the Mount Everest Region, and there is a double-page map of New Zealand and Antarctica. – Amazon reviewer