Tenzing – the Everest Film

Maureen and I went to a preview of the new Everest film Tenzing, directed by Jennifer Peedom and written by Luke Davies. It’s great, even for non-mountain climbing enthusiasts, and also shows Nepal and its mountains in a magical fashion. Perhaps best of all it makes Tenzing Norgay, the Nepalese-Sherpa-Indian climber the hero of the epic climb in 1953. He overcomes racial bias – let’s face it the expedition leader John North would really have liked two Englishmen to have reached the top first, instead he got Tenzing and Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, to the top. There’s a key scene where Tenzing meets North and insists that he will be on the climbing team, not just a Sherpa guide and porter. Nevertheless at the end of the day teamwork won out and Tenzing and Ed Hillary remained firm friends for the rest of their lives.

In the film Jill Henderson of the Himalayan Club in Darjeeling appears to push John Hunt to accept Tenzing on the expedition. In reality it was probably more a case of her persuading Tenzing to join!

We’re old enough and have hung around Nepal and the Himalaya for long enough to have bumped into assorted members of the Everest Expedition including Jan Morris. As James Morris he, before James began Jan, famously raced the news back to The Times in London in time for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In fact that part of the Everest story doesn’t feature in the film! We’ve featured at travel writing festivals with Jan in California and Ireland.

▲ Then there’s John Hunt, later Lord Hunt, and when the first Lonely Planet India guide won the Guidebook of the Year award in London in 1982 it was Lord Hunt who made the presentation at the Royal Geographical Society.

◄ And Sir Edmund Hillary, I collected his signature for my pre-teen autograph collection back in the 1950s and here’s Maureen with Sir Edmund at an American Himalayan Association gathering in the 1990s. More recently I’ve met with his son Peter and grandson George on assorted occasions through the Australian Himalayan Foundation.

▲ John Hunt, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in New Delhi, soon after the Everest ascent (James Burke photograph)

In 2025 I visited the wonderful Greek island of Hydra, in pursuit of Leonard Cohen, the island’s most famous visitor – in fact Hydra has attracted plenty of interesting residents over the years. The terrific collection of photographs Life Magazine photographer James Burke took in October 1960, many of them featuring Cohen, Marianne Ihlen, Charmian Clift, George Johnston and others of that interesting gang, only emerged from a long hibernation in a Life Magazine filing cabinet a few years ago. James Burke was also a noted Himalayan photographer and took that classic photograph of the successful Everest team soon after their climb.