All That and Everest Too

The British expedition to the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, led by New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary, was one memorable event of that year, “a summer sixty years ago when all seemed possible,” David Robson writes for the Daily Express. “[It was] the storybook season when no hero was too old and no mountain too high, [and] when the young Queen was crowned. On 29 May the summit of Mount Everest was reached for the first time. No matter that the two who got there were Hillary, a New Zealander, and Tenzing Norgay who was Nepalese. It was a British expedition and a long-dreamed-of achievement. The news was held back until the morning of Coronation day – 2 June. The Daily Express had the best headline: ‘All this – and Everest too!’” The Coronation Festival, taking place over four days in July in the Gardens of Buckingham Palace, will celebrate the 60th anniversary of The Queen’s Coronation.