When asked what he thought of western civilisation, Mahatma Gandhi famously replied: “I think it would be a very good idea.” And 40 years ago, when writing the book to accompany that highpoint of British television, the series called Civilisation (BBC Books, 1969) Kenneth Clark explained his reasoning behind the title: “I had no clear idea what it meant, but I thought it was preferable to barbarism, and fancied that this was the moment to say so.” He added: “It was concerned only with Western Europe. Obviously I could not include the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome, because to have done so would have meant another ten programmes, at least; and the same was true of China, Persia, India and the world of Islam.”

In the resulting 360-page book, England receives its first mention on page 142 when, in 1498, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus arrives in Oxford. Clark wrote: “In his earlier life he seems to have liked England, and so for the first time this country makes a brief appearance in our survey of civilisation.”

Erasmus (1466-1536) was born in Rotterdam, the illegitimate son of a man named Gerard – who later became a priest – and of a woman named Margaret, a physician’s daughter. They cared for him well until their early deaths from the plague and they provided him with the best education that money could buy at monastic and semi-monastic schools.

By the time he got to England, he was already a pan-European, a citizen of a club of nations held together by the all-pervading spirit of the Roman Catholic Church. In Clark’s words: “There arrived in Oxford a poor scholar who was destined to become the spokesman of northern civilisation and the greatest internationalist of his day.”

Yet, ironically, it was his enlightened sense of reason which helped sow the seeds of Reformation (Revolution even) which in the 16th century were to produce such destructive forces to cohesion as Luther in Germany and Henry VIII in England.

As Dr Jacob Bronowski said in that other pinnacle of television, The Ascent of Man (BBC Books, 1973), Erasmus had to join the church because at the time there was no other way for a clever, poor boy to rise. But he kicked against it. Bronowski wrote: “The monk’s life was for [him] an iron door closed against knowledge. Only when Erasmus read the classics for himself, in defiance of orders, did the world open for him.”

In other words he introduced a new and more objective (humanist) way of looking at the stultified, timeless Church teachings.

While in Oxford he met and befriended the lecturer John Colet (1466-1519), the rich son of a Lord Mayor of London who later became Dean of St Paul’s and founder of St Paul’s School – and a pioneer of the English Reformation. He also became a lifelong friend of Sir Thomas More, who, apart from being Lord Chancellor of England, was also the High Steward of both Oxford and Cambridge – Erasmus even arranged for fellow Dutchman Hans Holbein to paint More’s portrait.

On a lighter note, Erasmus still lives in our everyday language. He compiled a book of 4,658 so-called Adagia (adages) many of which are still in use, including ‘No sooner said than done’; ‘to lead by the nose’; ‘to be in the same boat’; ‘we cannot all do everything’. As for Gandhi’s view of Western Civilisation, some might suggest that a closer-knit Europe might help? And a few more TV series like Civilisation from people like Clark (1903-1983) who, incidentally, was the Keeper of Fine Art at the Ashmolean from 1931-3 and the Slade Professor of Fine Art from 1946-50. And surely even Gandhi would accept Erasmus as civilised; after all he never returned to Holland because he said they drank too much there (he drank only Burgundy). He said: “When I get a little money I buy books; and if there is any left over I buy food and clothes.”