Brigadier Henry Cecil John Hunt, Baron Hunt KG, PC, CBE, DSO, (22 June 1910 – 8 November 1998) was a British army officer who is best known as the leader of the successful 1953 British Expedition to Mount Everest.
Hunt was born in Simla, British India on 22 June 1910, the son of Captain Cecil Edwin Hunt MC, of the Indian Army, and a great nephew of the explorer Richard Francis Burton. His father was killed in action during the First World War. As...
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Brigadier Henry Cecil John Hunt, Baron Hunt KG, PC, CBE, DSO, (22 June 1910 – 8 November 1998) was a British army officer who is best known as the leader of the successful 1953 British Expedition to Mount Everest.
Hunt was born in Simla, British India on 22 June 1910, the son of Captain Cecil Edwin Hunt MC, of the Indian Army, and a great nephew of the explorer Richard Francis Burton. His father was killed in action during the First World War. As a child, Hunt, from the age of ten, spent much holiday time in the Alps, learning some of the mountaineering skills he would later hone while taking part in several expeditions in the Himalayas while serving in India. He made a guided ascent of Piz Palu at fourteen. He was educated at Marlborough College, Wiltshire, and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, where he was awarded the King's Gold Medal and the Anson Memorial Sword.
After Sandhurst, Hunt was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC) in 1930. In...
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