![\"Reading](\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5832\/30134101381_a49f45d88c_z.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe book review section is a particular favourite and one of the reasons I have switched away from the digital version<\/a> of the paper that is served on the web. Not only does this afford the nostalgic and tactile pleasures of the paper paper, but it also releases me from the linear tether of online searches into the comradely hands of the editors, on whom I rely each week to dish up a collection of the new and the unexpected.<\/p>\n I am rarely disappointed, but the joy of novelty is almost invariably accompanied by sweeping feelings of helplessness amid\u00a0a rising tide of “yet more stuff”. Not only does each fresh volley of book reviews bring new titles to add to my list of the unread, but the reviews invariably also refer to earlier books and authors previously unknown to me. Worse still for my self-confidence, the reviews tend to be\u00a0written by people whose learning embraces whole movements and epochs of human history, and whose judgement of the achievements of humankind down through the ages rings with cast-iron assurance. Am I the only reader drowning in information who gawps at such a firm grasp of the world?\u00a0So much knowledge on show makes me uneasy.\u00a0It compounds my fear of being a dilettante \u2013 flitting here and there across the periphery of the world of ideas without really understanding the centre.<\/p>\n In truth\u00a0this isn\u2019t so serious a fear because\u00a0it doesn\u2019t put me off my weekend read. I can tolerate the discomfort for the sake of the rewards. Such as last weekend, when, in Mary Beard\u2019s review<\/a> of James Stourton\u2019s new biography of art historian Kenneth Clark, I was once again pleased and disconcerted to have my ignorance taken by surprise. Although I had thrilled<\/a> at\u00a0Clark\u2019s Civilisation<\/em><\/a>, his\u00a0beautiful 1969 television documentary on the importance of European art, I guess I should have expected that not everyone was so impressed. The teenage Mary Beard was also delighted by it on first viewing but learned quicker than I did\u00a0to mistrust the \u201cgreat man\u201d approach to history. And nor was the critic John Berger, whose own later documentary, Ways of Seeing<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Beard noted in her review as a important critical response to Clark (who nevertheless still has his defenders<\/a>).<\/p>\n I had never heard of Berger or his 1972 television series which, it turns out \u2013 why did I expect anything else? \u2013 is widely regarded as a seminal piece of work. Nevertheless, I was sufficiently intrigued to seek out Ways of Seeing<\/em> online. All four of the 30 minute episodes are available on YouTube.<\/p>\n