The perfect last-minute gift Shop credit bundles
The World According to Colour by James Fox
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person opening a gift

The perfect last-minute gift

Audiobook credit bundles can be delivered instantly, given worldwide, and support local bookstores!

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

The World According to Colour

A Cultural History
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Narrator James Fox

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 9 hours 26 minutes
Language English
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Brought to you by Penguin.

A beguiling cultural history of colour by the BAFTA nominated broadcaster and art historian James Fox

The subject of this book is humankind's extraordinary relationship with colour. It is composed of a series of voyages, ranging across the world and throughout history, which reveal the meanings that have been attached to the colours we see around us and the ways these have shaped our culture and imagination. It takes seven primary colours - black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple and green - and uncovers behind each a root idea, based on visual resemblances or properties so rudimentary as to be common to all societies.

The book traces these meanings to show how they changed and multiplied, the role that they have played in our culture and history, and how understanding them allows us to see many of the milestones in the history of art - from Bronze Age gold-work to Turner, Titian to Yves Klein - in a new way. It proceeds by stories, which cumulatively tell another, larger one: a history of the world from the black nothing which preceded existence to the birth of our red-blooded species; the gilded gods who animated the world in antiquity to the blue horizons which framed the Age of Discovery; the pristine aspirations of Enlightenment, the technicolour innovation which fuelled the Industrial Revolution and the colour which most embodies the environmental crisis which now faces us.

'This book is a triumph. James Fox's passionate and illuminating exploration of the extraordinary relationship we have with colour is itself extraordinary. It is an intellectual feast as well as a visual one - a true biography of colour which will delight readers.' Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

ยฉ2023 James Fox (P)2023 Penguin Audio

James Fox (Author)
James Fox is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a BAFTA-nominated broadcaster. He is the author of The World According to Colour: A Cultural History, which was chosen as a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Spectator. His many acclaimed BBC television documentaries include programmes about British art, Japanese culture, the connections between art and nature, and the history of colour. He is also an advisor to the Loewe Craft Foundation and a Trustee of the Marchmont Makers Foundation, which supports arts and crafts practitioners across the Scottish Borders and beyond, aiming to inspire creativity across the arts, crafts, business and social enterprise.

James Fox (Reader)
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.

James Fox (Author)
James Fox is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a BAFTA-nominated broadcaster. He is the author of The World According to Colour: A Cultural History, which was chosen as a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Spectator. His many acclaimed BBC television documentaries include programmes about British art, Japanese culture, the connections between art and nature, and the history of colour. He is also an advisor to the Loewe Craft Foundation and a Trustee of the Marchmont Makers Foundation, which supports arts and crafts practitioners across the Scottish Borders and beyond, aiming to inspire creativity across the arts, crafts, business and social enterprise.

James Fox (Reader)
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.

Audiobook details

Author:

Narrator:
James Fox

ISBN:
9781802063233

Length:
9 hours 26 minutes

Language:
English

Publisher:
Penguin Books Ltd

Publication date:

Edition:
Unabridged

PDF extra:
Available

Illustration of person opening a gift

The perfect last-minute gift

Audiobook credit bundles can be delivered instantly, given worldwide, and support local bookstores!

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

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. 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 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 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. the book is a pleasure... a compelling and elegant...a rare achievement - a scholarly reference work that invites reading for pleasure. 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. fascinating...In this book (Fox) has gifted each of us a manual to navigate and enjoy the extraordinary design of the world around us. Expand reviews
The perfect last-minute gift Shop credit bundles