Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Thursday, the 6th of June, the centenary of one of the most celebrated mysteries in the history of mountaineering.

Did George Mallory and Andrew Sandy Irvin reached the summit of Everest on the 6th of June

1924, nearly three decades before the first documented climb to the summit?

The climbers were last seen by a geologist Noel O'Dell, high on the northeast ridge of the

planet's highest mountain and still going strong for the summit.

Then the clouds rolled in and they were never seen alive again.

Today's guest, Graham Hoyland, knows more about this story than anyone else.

He's reached the summit of Everest and he's the author of Last Hours on Everest,

the gripping story of Mallory and Irvin's fatal ascent.

Graham, welcome to the podcast. Can you set the scene a century ago?

Well, a century ago, the British were trying for the third time to climb Mount Everest.

There'd been a reconnaissance in 1921 with George Mallory, figuring out what the mountain was like.

Then in 1922, my uncle, Howard Somerville, was also on the expedition and they tried to climb the mountain

but unfortunately this time there was an avalanche and seven Sherpas were killed.

And then in 1924 Howard Somerville again tried to climb the mountain this time without

any oxygen and got very high up to 28,000 feet, a thousand feet from the summit, and got frostbite

in his larynx, sat down to die, but managed to crawl back down, and then Mallory set off with

the young Sandy Irvin up into the clouds and was never seen again.

Is it the case that we still don't know whether they made it,

or indeed, if anybody made it before, of course, Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953?

Well, it's true to say that we don't know for sure who climbed Everest first.

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