The Spectator USA
The Spectator’s Books of the Year 2020
As we are at the end thereof, I returned to Civilisation, Kenneth Clark’s renowned 13-part series of 1969. I made it to year’s end by binge-watching the program yet again. Clark’s message well fits the bill for 2020. Student riots formed the backdrop of his episode on the French Revolution. The disturbances of our own annus horribilis might again recall that ‘however complex and solid it seems’, civilization is ‘actually quite fragile’ and easily destroyed.
This year I also read Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation, James Stourton’s 2016 update to Meryle Secrest’s 1984 biography. Stourton’s account left me wanting less of the ‘life’ and more of the ‘art and Civilisation, so I tracked down a dusty library copy of Clark’s 1969 companion book to the television series, with the golden reliquary bust of Charlamagne from Aachen Cathedral’s treasury glowing on the cover. The book adapts and builds on the script of the show. Clark famously called his program ‘a personal view’. His viewpoint comes across even more personally in print. ‘After setbacks and deviations at least as destructive as those of our own time,’ Clark concludes, ‘Western civilisation has been a series of rebirths. Surely this should give us confidence in ourselves.’ I sure hope so.