The sound of an organ tumbles and rolls. A camera pans slowly over a succession of art’s most famous wonders: Michelangelo’s David and Botticelli’s Primavera, the Taj Mahal and the dome of St Paul’s. And the television audience waits. The anticipation builds. It’s beginning to feel as if this organ might be heralding a much-delayed bride when a man with silvery hair finally strolls on to screen.
“What is civilisation?” he asks as he stands on the banks of the Seine. The buttressed stone towers of Notre Dame soar skywards beyond him. “I don’t know,” he continues, clipped accents cutting