ABSTRACT
This author allows himself the liberty of imagining a diary kept by Neil Smith throughout his life and extracting from it various fragments reflecting key moments of his life and typical aspects of his thinking and personality. Please note this is a work of fiction, hence the use of the term 'apocryphal'. In the opening lines of his well-documented and vivid tribute article published in 2013, year after the Scottish geographer passed away, Don Mitchell points out that 'Neil Smith hated hagiography'. Smith was prolific and versatile writer and publisher, regularly engaging with burning topical issues. It seems rather unlikely that someone who was already setting out his concerns on daily basis in influential scientific journals or in widely read media articles should devote time to doing the same in diary designed to be read later. As the editor, the author takes full responsibility for content and exonerates the hypothetical author from any possible misrepresentation of his life and work.
