Hillary, who reached the peak of Everest on May 29 1953, days before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, only admitted being the first man to reach the top of the world’s highest mountain after the death of his climbing companion, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, in 1986.

A quiet man whose laid-back demeanour seemed at odds with his risky explorations, Hillary led numerous other expeditions over the next two decades, including journeys to the South Pole, six Himalayan ascents, a search for the fabled Yeti and the source of the Yangtze river.

He led the New Zealand section of the Trans-Antarctic expedition from 1955 to 1958 and in 1958 participated in the first mechanised expedition to the South Pole. Hillary spent much of his life supporting humanitarian work among the Sherpas and the people of Nepal’s mountain villages through his Himalayan Trust, which helped build hospitals, clinics, bridges, airstrips and nearly 30 schools. He was made an honourary Nepalese citizen in 2003.

In an interview with the Guardian in 2003, he said his charity work gave him the most pride and not the Everest ascent. “I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you’ve got people just streaming up the mountain — well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper really... It’s all bullshit on Everest these days.”

A pretty top character

Greg Gregory, 90, an Australian photographer who accompanied Hillary on the Everest expedition said: “He really was a pretty top character. He was a member of the team like everybody else and nobody knew until quite late on, when John Hunt, who was the leader of the summit expedition, decided who was going up there, that he would be the first.”

Pen Hadow, the renowned British polar explorer, said Hillary’s death “closes one of the great chapters of planetary exploration”.

Born Edmund Percival Hillary in Auckland on July 20 1919, he attended Auckland grammar school, where he was younger than most of his class and not socially adept. Years later he was to say, “I was a shy boy with a deep sense of inferiority that I still have.”

His taste for mountaineering began when, at 16, he went on a school trip to Mt Ruapehu, where he first saw snow.

By the second world war, Hillary had become seriously involved in climbing. He served in the New Zealand air force for two years as a navigator, but was discharged after being seriously burned in an accident.

“Some day I am going to climb Everest,” he told a friend just before the war. After the war, he spent as much time preparing for Everest as he could, practising rock climbing and ice-pick work. In 1951, he made his first trip to the Himalayas. Hillary joined the British expedition to climb Everest in 1953, led by British mountaineer John Hunt.

After an earlier pair had to retire with exhaustion and the effects of high altitude 300ft short of the summit, Hillary and Tenzing, seen as the strongest and fittest in the team, were chosen to make the final assault.

Writing of their final push to the summit, Hillary wrote, “Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no final pinnacle. We looked round in wonder. To our immense satisfaction we realised we had reached the top of the world.”