An excellent, wide ranging cultural history of colour. Fox focuses on seven colours: black, red, white, yellow, blue, purple and green, taking in science (optics, chemistry, biology), perception, meaning and symbolism across cultures and time. There are religious social and ideological considerations, such as history of white’s association with purity, skin colour and cleanliness that led to racism. Negative meanings of black in Western Europe: death, evil, decay and so on are contrasted with different meanings black had in Japanese art, which I found particularly interesting. Fox also looks at linguistics and literature with examples from Shakespeare, Romantic poets and Orhan Pamuk among others and I made a note to reread My Name is Red, it’s been too long.

Fans of BBC4 art documentaries will likely remember Fox’s excellent series on three colours (blue, white and gold). He is an art historian first and foremost and the book really comes alive when he discusses how artists past and present use colour, from Turner and Monet to Ana Mendieta and David Nash. I read an advance copy without colour images on kindle and am planning on buying the hardback for reference and for the glorious art.

Overall, an impressive book, highly recommended. My thanks to Penguin, Allen Lane and Netgalley for the opportunity to read The World of Colour.

A fascinating book. The mix of cultural and art history, with science had me absolutely gripped, and although a lot of the content wasn't new to me, it is presented in a very readable way. The copy I received had no pictures, so I had to keep referring to my phone, but I am sure a hardback copy of this book will make an excellent gift.

The book’s 7 chapters are each based around a single colour with 3 or 4 different topic-stories related to that colour. The stories are drawn from a wide global and historical range from cave art to postwar ‘monochrome’ artists like Yves Klein and Ad Reinhardt. I found the sections on the significance of green for Islam and the use of shades of black in fifteenth-century Japan were particularly interesting.

The author measures out the scientific information and his colour theory very carefully (not too much; not too little). I think he judged this well and I thought his explanations clear and interesting. As I understand it from his explanation the Impressionists didn’t seek to replicate natural colours directly so much as aim to achieve the right optical effects through juxtaposition of clear but contrary colours - hence the use of surprising colour choices, such as purple shadows.

I like this kind of book - and the global mix here was particularly good. Simon Winchester and Mark Kurlansky are go-to authors, but Kassia St Clair’s ‘charming and absorbing’ The Golden Thread is perhaps a good parallel for this book. I am sure it will be a success.

What are colours? What do they mean to different cultures? How is the symbolism, perception and manufacture of colours entwined with human history? This is a fascinating book which takes us on a journey through seven colours: black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple and green. Although not a comprehensive book on the subject, it's wide-ranging, with a strong focus on art history but also with some psychology, linguistics, literature, science, religion and social studies. The narrative is supported by many quotes on colour. Some of the information wasn't new to me - particularly the chapter on purple - as I've read a few books about colour before, but I still learned a lot. The author, art historian James Fox, presented a BBC TV series in 2012 called A History of Art in Three Colours (these were white, blue and gold) which I remember enjoying. Colour is an endlessly fascinating topic.

The coverage is to some extent the author's personal choice and I think he assumes the reader knows a little art history already. I liked the attention given to particular artists, such as Turner, Yves Klein, Kandinsky, Monet, Ana Mendieta and Le Corbusier. At times the writing with more of a scientific focus was a little dry and I had to skim-read. The art-focused sections were the most captivating for me. I would say that the chapters on red and white are not for the faint-hearted, dealing respectively with blood and racism.

The text refers to images, which I mostly haven't seen as they weren't included in my advance copy, but they sound well-chosen and will make the published book something special.

[Note - this review will be on my blog, 22nd August]