‘‘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 civil rights movement was making headway; the women’s movement was making headlines. In Britain, homosexuality and abortion were legalised.
The contemporary 20th-century world was one that baffled Kenneth Clark, as he was the first to admit. The “personal view” he presents in Civilisation concludes prior to the Great War. Before beginning work on the series, he supplied the BBC with several stipulations regarding his approach. At the top of the list was — “not Marxist”.
“My approach to history,” Clark explained, “was unconsciously different from that now in favour in universities which sees all historical change as the result of economic and communal processes. I believe in the importance of individuals, and am a natural hero-worshipper.”
Clearly the public were fond of heroes too. Broadcast in colour on attracted over two and a half million viewers and was sold to 65 countries.
