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The Secret Lives of Colour

 17.00

by Kassia St. Clair

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘A mind-expanding tour of the world without leaving your paintbox. Every colour has a story, and here are some of the most alluring, alarming, and thought-provoking. Very hard painting the hallway magnolia after this inspiring primer.’
Simon Garfield

The Secret Lives of Colour

The Secret Lives of Colour tells the unusual stories of the 75 most fascinating shades, dyes and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso’s blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history. In this book Kassia St Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colours and where they come from (whether Van Gogh’s chrome yellow sunflowers or punk’s fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilisation. Across fashion and politics, art and war, The Secret Lives of Colour tell the vivid story of our culture.

About the Author

Kassia St Clair is a writer based in London. She studied women’s dress and the eighteenth-century masquerade at Bristol and Oxford.

She has since written about design and culture for publications including the Economist, the Telegraph, TLS and 1843. Her colour column has been running in Elle Decoration since 2013, and she is a former assistant books & arts editor for The Economist.

The Secret Lives of Colour, her first book, was Radio 4’s Book of the Week and has been translated into nine languages. The Golden Thread will be published in the UK in October 2018.

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Weight 0.3 kg
Dimensions 12.8 × 2.6 × 19.7 cm