Neil Armstrong is one of the most famous people in human history.
When he returned from the Moon, he was feted by kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers. He was Captains America and Kirk rolled into one – with a touch of President John F Kennedy.
He had the world at his feet, but instead of embracing his celebrity status he retreated from public life.
The public knew little about this enigmatic man. But now we are gaining a glimpse of the real Neil.
There was a sense that he was reclusive. Perhaps the experience of the lunar mission had left him somehow traumatised, because life on Earth seemed an anticlimax after the heights of reaching the Moon.
He did not enjoy giving interviews, so his silence gave space for such rumours to grow and be recycled each decadal anniversary of the first Moon landing.
I was one of the few journalists lucky enough to have met Neil. And he seemed to me to be the sanest person I had ever met.
I was a young reporter working for BBC Look East. He was receiving an honorary degree from Cranfield University and I was invited to interview him.
I was nervous and star-struck. He was smiley and friendly. He was first man to have set foot on the Moon yet he was gracious, putting me at my ease and answering my questions thoughtfully and thoroughly.
And he sensed my pain when I confessed to having felt disappointed that the Apollo programme was cancelled – ruining my young boy's dream of one day travelling through space myself.
I asked him: "Whatever happened to the Armstrong dream?"
"The dream is still there," he replied with a twinkle in his eye. "The reality may have faded, but it will come back in time," he continued.
His answer was an act of kindness to reawaken a young man's optimistic spirit of the Moon landings, rather than to provide a reporter with a story.
I met him again 16 years later. He was in the UK with his fellow Apollo astronauts Gene Cernan and Jim Lovell as part of a world tour to commemorate the Moon landing's 40th anniversary./BBC news