Review: The Secret Lives of Colour

The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

We take colour for granted these days; where ever you look you have garish clothing and brightly painted items competing for attention. But it was never like that, go back several hundred years ago, and lost people wore grey or brown cloth that had been dyed with the ochres and earth colours. Those that had some colour in their lives were the rich; they could afford the purples and reds that adorned their clothes and the rare blues and yellows that graced their artworks.

In this fascinating book, St Clair has uncovered the history behind 75 different colour shades and hues and tell their individual story. We find out where in the world these colours originated from, who made them popular, just how expensive a vivid blue like ultramarine was and the chemistry behind turning ground rock into artist’s paint and dyes for cloth. Modern colours are fairly robust, but it is a reminder just how lethal some colours were. The historical account of colour is enlightening too, as we find out which have come into fashion, why some prefer blondes, which colour was behind a notorious seduction and which have remained popular and those that currently don’t fit the bill.

Not only is it a nicely written and fascinating book, but it is a beautifully produced book too; each colour group is split into sections and the margins on each page are coloured to match the shade being written about. As you read though each page changes subtly in colour and tone. Just rippling through the pages you transcend from white to yellow to the reds, blues greens and end up at the black, it is a nice effect. The dots on the front are embossed making touching the cover a tactile experience. It was worth reading and would make a good companion volume to Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour by Philip Ball and Colour: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay if you already have those.

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Just won a copy of this

Review: The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I

The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I by Stephen Alford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Elizabeth I reigned for a total of 45 years in England, and the stability she gave as head of state gave us the Golden Age of wealth and greater self-assurance as a nation. The final Tudor monarch saw a cultural advances too, this being the time of Shakespeare and military confidence on the high seas. However, the Europeans saw her very differently; as daughter of Anne Boylen, Henry VIII's second wife, she was considered a bastard and Protestant heretic by catholic Europe. Following her denouncement by the Pope various European rulers prepared plans to dispose her, replacing her with Mary. The event that most people are aware of is the almost invasion by The Spanish Armada, but throughout her reign she was protected by a team of loyal subjects.

These men were a motley bunch of ambassadors, codebreakers, and confidence-men and spies who used all sort of covert and overt methods to counter the catholic threat. Infiltrators were sent to the continent to ingratiate themselves with the church, uncovering conspiracies both real and imagined, identified and followed gentlemen who were plotting the overthrow of their Queen. The network tracked priests entering the country under cover, intercepted and deciphered almost all correspondence between suspects in England and their contacts in France, Spain and Italy and neutered the threat that hung over the crown.

Drawing on documents from archive and collections, Alford shines a light into this dark and shadowy time of history. The narrative details tense searches across the countryside looking for specific people who were perceived to be a threat to the crown. Traitors who were convicted, sometimes only on hearsay and confessions uttered under torture on the rack, were condemned in horrific ways to die. It is an interesting account of those involved in keeping their monarch safe from all the assassination attempts and plots, but at times was fairly complicated as he details all the people involved in these plots. Worth reading though for those that like their Tudor history.

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Unexpected Book Post from Head of Zeus

Review: The Hanging Tree

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Marble Arch has a ghoulish history, it was home to the Tyburn gallows, a place where the condemned would end up after their final trip along Oxford Street. It’s bloody legacy has returned with a vengeance with the death of a girl at an exclusive party of one of the Mayfair mansions that are normally empty. The residents of the Folly don’t normally bother with routine inquires about suspicious deaths, but it turns out that Lady Ty’s daughter was at the party, and as Peter Grant owes her a favour he is called in to assist. Plunging straight into the world of the super-rich, with their enormous homes expensive cars, Grant is about to discover that at the point where privilege, blood and magic mix, he has a first class opportunity to make new enemies and it might have a serious impact on his life span.

Aaronovitch is back with the next instalment in the highly entertaining and slick urban fantasy series, and very good it is too. He has upped the tension in this one too, and it is very fast paced, with twists and turns as you’d expect. Characters from the earlier books are back as well, adding to the intrigue. I’m glad they are back in London, as that is as much a part of the books as Grant, Nightingale and Molly. I almost gave five stars, as I though that this has been the best of the bunch so far; the characters are developing very well and the banter between Nightingale and Grant and the other officers is hilarious. Even though this had a really good plot, it felt like there was something being held back, that storylines were being drawn to set things up for the next in the series (please tell me that there are going to be more). Just needs Grant to crack his knuckles and get stuck in properly…

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Review: The Accidental Dictionary: The remarkable twists and turns of English words

The Accidental Dictionary: The remarkable twists and turns of English words by Paul Anthony Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Words are chameleons, they start out meaning one thing, and being spelt in a particular way, and before you know it the spelling has changed and they now mean the total opposite to what you thought. In The Accidental Dictionary, Paul Anthony Jones has taken 100 words that almost everyone would know or be familiar with, and peel back the layers of history behind each word to revel the startlingly different meanings that they had originally.

In this strange and wonderful journey we will discover how alcohol once was eye shadow, a blockbuster was a bomb, hijinks was a drinking game and that a secretary could always keep a secret. The short witty essays on each chosen word are fascinating, you can see the evolution on some words, and other will surprise you in the way that they have flipped and twisted before settling in the form we know them these days. But they will no doubt change and evolve again.

The Accidental Dictionary is both fascinating and rigorous at the same time. Jones writes in an entertaining and informative way, and it is littered liberally with quotes and verse, making this an engaging book to read too. It is a great little book for the etymological nut; and for those that cherish the book this has a stunning gold leaf print on the cover.

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