{"product_id":"2026200011968-secondhand-kenneth-clark-a-biography","title":"Kenneth Clark: A Biography","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew figures in twentieth-century cultural life commanded as much influence, elegance, and controversy as Kenneth Clark — the art historian, museum director, and television personality whose 1969 BBC series Civilisation brought the history of Western art to millions of viewers worldwide. Meryle Secrest's Kenneth Clark: A Biography chronicles the extraordinary life of a man who shaped public taste like no other, tracing his ascent from a privileged but emotionally distant childhood to the directorship of the National Gallery in London, his wartime role as a guardian of Britain's artistic heritage, and his ultimate transformation into a household name. Secrest details the paradoxes at the heart of the man — the champion of beauty who was often accused of coldness, the public intellectual who harboured intensely private passions — with a narrative precision that illuminates both the person and the age he helped define.\n\nDrawing on intimate access to Clark's correspondence, diaries, and the recollections of those closest to him, Secrest presents a portrait that is as much a study of twentieth-century Britain as it is of a single remarkable life. Her biography stands as a definitive account of a man who believed art was not merely decoration but a measure of civilisation itself — a conviction that made him enemies and admirers in equal measure, and whose legacy continues to provoke the question: can one person truly change the way a nation sees?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49130879746267,"sku":"2026200011968-SECONDHAND","price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/800cb47d-0a7b-42b8-949a-e6f677be3379.png?v=1786591724","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200011968-secondhand-kenneth-clark-a-biography","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}