Austen Steven Kark CBE (20 October 1926 – 10 May 2002) was a managing director of the BBC World Service.
After Birt became director general of the BBC in 1992, he had planned to end the service's independent status at Bush House in central London, and absorb it within the rest of the corporation.
His experiences in South Europe fuelled his interest in the region, particularly Greece; he would later write guidebooks about the country.
In retirement, he wrote Attic in Greece (1994), and The Forwarding Agent (1999), a spy thriller set in the Middle East that was praised by the crime writer PD James, an old friend.
Most of his book was written at his home in Nauplion, a small town in the Peloponnese, where he and his wife Bawden spent much of their time.
Austen Kark died at the age of 75 in the Potters Bar rail crash, in which his wife was severely injured.