The first flight over Mount Everest

This is the first aerial footage of the top of Mount Everest. It was shot in 1933 by Major Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker, a former fighter pilot and war hero. He was a real-life Biggles!

Blacker and his friends risked their lives in specially built biplanes, flying higher than anyone had flown before.

The film comes from the archive of the Royal Geographical Society, which sponsored a series of remarkable expeditions in the early 20th Century.