The Story of Colour
Gavin Evans

The Story of Colour offers a lively, anecdotal treatment of the cultural mysteries of the colours that we bathe in. It looks at how the meanings of colours things change over time and from place-to-place, and how most have contradictory meanings. Black is the colour of death and evil, but it also of rebellion and the ‘little black dress’. In much of the world, white is the colour of mourning, but it also of purity and virginity. Green is the colour of nature, of the environmentalism and Irish nationalism, of inexperience and envy. Yellow symbolises cowardice, and anti-Semitic branding, and, in France, jealousy. Pink is the colour of femininity, but was once a masculine colour. Or blue, today the boys’ colour, but once a girl’s thing– and also the colour of depression, pornographic movies, manual workers’ collars and royal blood. Red has long been the colour of the international left (along with its many other meanings – from anger to seduction) but in America it belongs to the party of Donald Trump. This book deals with the way we respond to the rainbow– the significance we give its seven shades and many more, covering sex, politics, fashion, sport and a whole lot more.