Ian McKellen on Edmund Hillary
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On May 29 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Everest.
Both men immediately became famous worldwide.
Actor Sir Ian McKellen, then a young teenager in Burnley, was clearly struck by the achievement. In later life he met Hillary in New Zealand and has strong memories of a modest man whose first job was beekeeping.
Hillary also took a tractor to the South Pole in 1958 and became High Commissioner to India in 1985
"I did a good job on Everest," Hillary once said, "but have always known my limitations and I found being classified as a hero slightly embarrassing."
Joining Sir Ian McKellen, is the author of Everest 1953, Mick Conefrey. He reveals the epic story of the first ascent, plus discusses Hillary's work with the Himalayan Trust.
Presented by Matthew Parris.
Producer: Miles Warde
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2015.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Great Lives is a podcast from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:03.6 | I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:06.8 | My guest today has said that he's sometimes mistaken for Dumbledore from Harry Potter, but maybe that's because Wizards all look the same. |
| 0:15.0 | Welcome Gandalf to great lives, or Sir Ian McKellen, as you are sometimes known. |
| 0:21.0 | We don't have time to read out all your awards for acting, but I did like the fact that |
| 0:26.0 | your first trip to the theatre was to see Peter Pan at the Manchester Opera House, and that since becoming |
| 0:31.7 | an actor you've hardly ever been out of work, |
| 0:34.4 | Hollywood, Coronation Street, so much more besides. |
| 0:37.4 | So go ahead and surprise us with your choice for great lives. |
| 0:41.3 | Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand climber who got to the top of Everest first with |
| 0:46.8 | tensing his Sherpa. |
| 0:48.8 | Why? |
| 0:49.8 | I don't know that I've ever really had any heroes. I think we were rather iconotastic. |
| 0:58.0 | House-houshold in the north of England just after the war. |
| 1:02.0 | Certainly Churchill was not someone we admired in our house. |
| 1:07.0 | We were more a Bevin in the household. |
| 1:10.0 | Royalty dropped in to Wigan and Bolton where we lived. We were very unimpressed. |
| 1:16.0 | They were riding about everywhere and not really our sort. |
| 1:21.0 | So when it came to the Queen's coronation, I remember in |
| 1:24.8 | 1953 the headlines that morning were for something that we did admire in our |
| 1:29.5 | household which was energy applied to a sensible object and that was the climbing of Everest and we were aware of the expedition and the news delayed I suspect by a canny edited times perhaps who had the exclusive |
| 1:46.8 | ever as conquered and Edmund Hillary became instantly the most famous man in |
... |
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