Lady June's first husband, the climber and yachtsman Peter Mulgrew, a longstanding friend of Sir Edmund's, died in 1979 when a sightseeing plane to Antarctica crashed into Mount Erebus. They had both been widowed when they married in 1989. Sir Edmund credited Lady June for drawing him out of the depression he suffered following the tragedy. The survivors, she said 'spun off in our individual directions'. In 2005, Sarah told her father's biographer Alexa Johnston that those in the family best able to cope with such a tragedy were those who had died. In 1975, his first wife Louise and his younger daughter Belinda were killed in a light aircraft crash as they flew from Kathmandu to meet him in the mountain village of Phaplu, where his Himalayan Trust team were building a hospital. The origins of the feud lie in Sir Edmund's dramatic life story. June's been working for the Himalayan Trust for 50 years. 'We can't hide the fact that Peter and June never got on,' she told the Guardian. Mary Lowe is the secretary of the Himalayan Trust's sister organisation in the UK, and married to Everest veteran George Lowe, the New Zealand climber who shared many of Sir Edmund's best adventures. When the courts awarded ownership of the watches to Sir Edmund's children, Peter promised to donate them to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The New Zealand government also intervened, warning that under the country's heritage laws, the Everest watch should not have been allowed to leave the country. When Lady June tried to sell the watches through the Swiss auction house Antiquorum, Peter and Sarah sought court orders to prevent her going ahead with the sale. The mass resignation from the Himalayan Trust's board follows last year's bitter argument over the ownership of several Rolex watches, including one awarded to Sir Edmund after the first ascent of Everest in 1953. She said she had reached the decision during the 50th anniversary celebrations of Khumjung School in Nepal's Solu-Khumbu district, the first project Sir Edmund built to help the Sherpas. Lady June had been a board member since the charity was established in 1966.

Family feud set 1975