Kōrero: The New Zealanders

In 1953 New Zealander Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay climbed Mt Everest, on the eve of the coronation of England’s Queen Elizabeth II. The achievement was seen as a British triumph, but Hillary came to personify the brave, self-deprecating New Zealander. In this portrait by John Cecil Hill he is the strong, good-looking Anglo-Saxon hero.