John Baptist Lucius Noel

Biography

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 Evere...