Conquering Everest was an astonishing human achievement, but on a lesser scale, it also represented a remarkable journalistic coup, an unparalleled scoop involving personal courage, ingenuity and some extremely canny journalistic plotting. The 1953 expedition was, in part, sponsored by The Times, which obtained exclusive rights of publication in return for a fee. The newspaper had been associated in the same way with earlier attempts to scale the peak, including George Mallory’s ill-fated attempt in 1924