John Baptist Lucius Noel

John Baptist Lucius Noel FRGS was a British mountaineer and filmmaker best known for his film of the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition. Noel's father, Colonel Edward Noel (1852–1917), was the younger son of Charles Noel, 2nd Earl of Gainsborough. Born in Newton Abbot, Devon, England, Noel was educated in Switzerland, where he fell in love with the mountains, and at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He was baptised Baptist Lucius and added the name John by deed poll in 1908. Noel was commissioned into the East Yorkshire Regiment in 1909 and posted to India. His battalion spent summers near the Himalayas and in 1913 he travelled in disguise into Tibet in order to approach Mount Everest. He reached to within forty miles of Everest, closer than any other foreigner before him. When the First World War started in 1914, Noel was on leave in Britain and he was attached to the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, as his own battalion remained in India. On 26 August 1914 at Le Cateau during the retreat from Mons, he was taken prisoner but managed to escape from the Germans. In 1916 he was seconded as an instructor in the Machine Gun Corps and, from 1920, he served as revolver instructor at the Small Arms School at Hythe, Kent. He wrote several pamphlets on revolvers and automatic pistols. He retired from the British Army in February 1922. In 1919 Noel was invited to address a joint meeting of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club about his travels near Everest. Sir Francis Younghusband used the occasion to call for the ascent of Mount Everest in 1921. He joined the 1922 Everest expedition as its official photographer and filmmaker and produced a short film, Climbing Mount Everest (1922). Shown in cinemas around Britain it had reasonable success. In 1924, Noel formed a private company which offered to fund £8,000 of the estimated £9,000 total cost of that year's Everest expedition if Noel was allowed to make a second film and retain all the rights to it…

Known for

Directing

Born

1890-02-26 · Newton Abbot, Devon, England, UK

Died

1989-03-12