View From The Summit

'Sir Edmund, he's worshipped, you know, as a god among the Sherpas.' Jamling Tenzing.

The first man to set foot on the summit of Everest, the man who led a team of tractors to the South Pole, the man who jetboated up the Ganges from the ocean to the sky has, for the first time, gathered all the remarkable adventures of a long life into one volume. But there is more to Ed Hillary than this. He is also the man who repaid his debt of fame to the Himalayas by inaugurating a programme of school, clinic, airstrip and bridge-building in Nepal which, with his still active support, has gone from strength to strength over the four decades since he himself mastered the Hillary Step and led his companion Tenzing Norgay up Everest's final summit ridge.

View from the Summit is a thoughtful and honest reappraisal of a life spent pushing human ability to its limits and relishing the challenges thrown down by the elements. It is also the story of a man whom the world has taken to its heart.

'He worked in a half light, huge and cheerful, his movement not so much graceful as unshakably assured, his energy almost demonic. He had a tremendous, bursting, elemental, infectious, glorious vitality about him, like some bright, burly diesel express pounding across America.' Jan Morris