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Why the BBC will never match Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation

No modern critic would dare to match his sweeping statements – indeed, few were up to it in his day

17 May 2014

9:00 AM

17 May 2014

9:00 AM

One afternoon in 1942, Kenneth Clark and his wife Jane called on two young painters for tea. The artists were John Craxton and Lucian Freud, then both around 20 and sharing a house in St John’s Wood. The visit was a success, as Craxton told me many years later, but not without its awkward moments.

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