THE CLASS OF KENNETH CLARK
The historian has been unfairly accused of elitism
‘‘It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation,” suggested Kenneth Clark at the conclusion of his 13-part television series, Civilisation, in 1969, “We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.”
Events at the time led him to suggest that, as unlikely as it seemed, European civilisation could fall to the barbarians as it had after the fall of Rome when “we got through by the skin of our teeth”. He quoted W.B. Yeats for back-up. It wasn’t that the centre could not hold, it was that there was no longer a centre. Being a self-proclaimed “stick-in-the-mud”, Clark was an odd choice to front the BBC’s ambitious (shot in 130 locations across 11 countries) and expensive (£130,000) project in a season of radicalism and youthful insurrection. Filming proceeded in 1967, the year the Vietnam War was at its deadliest, and global student protest at its peak. The …