Elliot Smith was born in Grafton in Northern NSW, but he is not remembered there, despite being a pioneering anatomist, authority on human evolution, a renowned archaeologist/anthropologist. He held chairs in Cairo, Manchester and University College, London. He was best known for his theory of cultural diffusion, placing Ancient Egypt as a dynamic source from which major elements of civilization were spread by the migration of people and values. This theory has been widely misrepresented. Americans in particular opposed ideas of foreign influence upon Mesoamerican cultures until recently. For a full account of his life and ideas see my 2012 book: Grafton Elliot Smith: Egyptology and the Diffusion of Culture (Sussex Press).

Writing as a Washington correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, famous pundit Malcolm Muggeridge wrote in 1946:

“Every now and again all my life I’d had a sudden mood of happiness, a kind of humility, a release from all fear, an awareness of the mysteriousness of my own being in relation to the universe. In such moods I recite the Lord’s Prayer to myself, finding great comfort and delight in its words….”

(Quoted in my book, Intellectuals and the Decline of Religion, Boolarong, 2017).