The World According to Colour
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  • Published: 6 April 2023
  • ISBN: 9781802063233
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $32.00

The World According to Colour

Formats & editions
Paperback
18 Jul 2023
EBook
26 Aug 2021
Audiobook
6 Apr 2023
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'An intellectual and visual feast - and a true biography of colour' - Edmund de Waal

The world comes to us in colour. But colour lives as much in our imaginations as it does in our surroundings, as this scintillating book reveals. Each chapter immerses the reader in a single colour, drawing together stories from the histories of art and humanity to illuminate the meanings it has been given over the eras and around the globe. Showing how artists, scientists, writers, philosophers, explorers and inventors have both shaped and been shaped by these wonderfully myriad meanings, James Fox reveals how, through colour, we can better understand their cultures, as well as our own. Each chapter offers a fresh perspective on a different epoch, and together they form a vivid, exhilarating history of the world. 'We have projected our hopes, anxieties and obsessions onto colour for thousands of years,' Fox writes. 'The history of colour, therefore, is also a history of humanity.'
  • Published: 6 April 2023
  • ISBN: 9781802063233
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $32.00
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About the author

James Fox

James Fox was born in Washington DC in 1945 and educated in England. He worked as a journalist in Africa and then in England, for the Sunday Times and the Observer, and has written for numerous other publications. White Mischief was made into a movie starring Greta Scacchi and Charles Dance.

Also by James Fox

White Mischief
See all

Praise for The World According to Colour

admirable ... The World According to Colour is a brilliant cultural history ... This intelligent, vividly written book is full of such black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple and green nuggets.

Laura Freeman, The Times

a tour de force ... he weaves together the historical, cultural and scientific background to provide context for a succession of bravura insights ... this is a brilliant book

Honor Clerk, The Spectator

In this compelling book, James Fox shows that the meanings connected to particular colours aren't arbitrary but are instead materially, socially and culturally determined ... One of a flurry of recent books on colour, Fox's is distinguished by his broad historical approach and by the diversity of perspectives and sources ... The greatest pleasure of this book is the way Fox's essays move fluently between the material, moral and historical ... This is a book that makes you want to paint.

Joad Raymond, BBC History Magazine

the book is a pleasure... a compelling and elegant...a rare achievement - a scholarly reference work that invites reading for pleasure.

Florence Hallett, i news

fascinating...In this book (Fox) has gifted each of us a manual to navigate and enjoy the extraordinary design of the world around us.

Anna Galbraith, Mail on Sunday

Fox glides into intellectual spaces; colour becomes a philosophical feast - astrophyscis, the origins of civilisation, a palette of moral associations. Though dazzling, everything has a point: when Fox shoots, he scores. You never see it coming, then suddenly all the pieces fit together as though they were meant to be

Ed Smith, New Statesman Books of the Year

For once, no problem with Christmas presents this year. The World According to Colour by James Fox is a brilliantly fluent and readable history of colour, galloping across a wide cultural and scientific landscape.

Honor Clerk, Spectator Books of the Year