Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark is a 1969 British television documentary series written and presented by the art historian Sir Kenneth Clark.

Its thirteen episodes outline the history of Western art, architecture and philosophy since the Dark Ages. It was produced by the BBC and aired from February to May 1969 on BBC2. Then, and in later transmissions in Britain, the United States and other countries, it reached an unprecedented number of viewers for an art series. Its production standards were praised and set the pattern for subsequent television documentary series. The New Yorker described it as revelatory for the general viewer.

Clark's 1969 book Civilisation: A Personal View, based on the series, has never been out of print, and the BBC's DVD issue of the series in 2005 has remained in the catalogues.

Clark had pioneered British television series about art, beginning in 1958, with Is Art Necessary?, an experimental series for the commercial broadcaster Associated Television. Over the next eight years Clark wrote and presented series and one-off programmes on the visual arts, ranging from Caravaggio to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rembrandt, Francisco Goya, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, and a co-production for commercial television and the BBC, Royal Palaces.

In 1966 David Attenborough, the controller of the BBC's new second television channel, BBC2, was in charge of introducing colour broadcasting in Britain. He conceived the idea of a series about great paintings as the standard-bearer for colour television, and thought Clark would be the best presenter for it. Clark was attracted by the suggestion, but at first declined to commit himself. He later recalled that what convinced him to take part was Attenborough's use of the word "civilisation" to sum up what the series would be about.

I had no clear idea what "civilisation" meant, but thought it was preferable to barbarism, and fancied that this was the moment to say so.

The series consists of thirteen programmes, each fifty minutes long, written and presented by Clark, covering western European civilisation from the end of the Dark Ages to the early twentieth century. As the civilisation under consideration excludes Graeco-Roman, Asian and other historically important cultures, a title was chosen that disclaimed comprehensiveness: Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark. Clark later commented, "I didn't suppose that anyone would be so obtuse as to think that I had forgotten about the great civilisations of the pre-Christian era and the East. However, I confess the title has worried me. It would have been easy in the eighteenth century: Speculations on the Nature of Civilisation as illustrated by the Phases of Civilised Life in Western Europe from the Dark Ages to Present Day. Unfortunately, this is no longer practicable." Although the series focused chiefly on the visual arts and architecture, there were substantial sections about drama, literature, music, philosophy and socio-political movements. Clark wanted to include more about law and philosophy, but "I could not think of any way of making them visually interesting."

After initial mutual antipathy, Clark and his principal director, Michael Gill, established a congenial working relationship. They and their production team spent three years from 1966 filming in one hundred and seventeen locations in thirteen countries. The filming was to the highest technical standards of the day, and quickly went over budget; it cost £500,000 by the time it was complete. Attenborough rejigged his broadcasting schedules to spread the cost, transmitting each episode twice during the thirteen-week run.