 Marcus " Mark " Laurence Elwin Oliphant was born on 8 October 1901 in Kent Town , a suburb of Adelaide . His father was Harold George " Baron " Oliphant , a civil servant with the South Australian Engineering and Water Supply Department and part @-@ time lecturer in Economics with the Workers ' Educational Association . His mother was Beatrice Edith Fanny Oliphant , née Tucker , an artist . He was named after Marcus Clarke , the Australian author , and Laurence Oliphant , the British traveller and mystic . Most people called him Mark ; this became official when he was knighted in 1959 . He had four younger brothers , Roland , Keith , Nigel and Donald . His parents were theosophists , and as such were opposed to eating meat . Marcus became a lifelong vegetarian while a boy , after witnessing the slaughter of pigs on a farm . He was found to be completely deaf in one ear and he needed glasses for severe astigmatism and short @-@ sightedness . 
