What remains of the colours of our childhood? What are our memories of a blue rabbit, a red dress, a yellow bike – and were they really those colours? What colours do we associate with our student years, our first loves, our adult lives? How does colour leave its mark on memory? In an attempt to answer these and other questions, Michel Pastoureau presents us with a journal about colours that covers half a century. Drawing on personal recollections, he retraces the recent history of colours through an exploration of fashion and clothing, everyday objects and practices, emblems and flags, sport, literature, museums and art. This text – playful, poetic, nostalgic – records the life of both the author and his contemporaries. We live in a world increasingly bursting with colour, in which colour remains a focus for memory, a source of delight and, most of all, an invitation to dream.

Table of Contents:
Colour. An aide-mémoire I. CLOTHING In the beginning was yellow Turbulent stripes The navy-blue blazer Subversive trousers A particular blue From the garment to the myth Colour against flesh Neutral shades in good taste Mitterand beige Slimming colours In the London Underground II. DAILY LIFE My mother's pharmacy The sad tale of young Philippe Sweet-dispensers Choosing a colour: an impossible undertaking? Greyness Metro tickets Red or blue? Traffic lights Colour and design: a missed chance? Eating colours III. THE ARTS AND LETTERS In a painter's studio A painter caught between two volumes In darkened halls Ivanhoe 'Vowels' The Red and the Black Chrétien de Troyes at the cinema Pink pigs and black pigs When Dalí assigned marks The colours of a great painter Historians without colours The workings of time IV. ON SPORTS GROUNDS Goals and referees The yellow bike Bartali and the Italian flag The Tour de l'Ouest Colour by default Easy colours and difficult ones Pink and orange V. MYTHS AND SYMBOLS Little Red Ridinghood Long live school Latin My discovery of heraldry The black cat Green superstitions The colour of destiny Furling the colours A historical object that is alarming Playing chess Wittgenstein and heraldic colours VI. ON TASTES AND COLOURS An American gift Sunbathing through the years The 'bling' of the 1950s A brief history of gold A mysterious shade of green Do you see red clearly? No purple for children The whims of memory Preferences and opinion polls VII. WORDS Brown and beige Spelling and grammar A day at the races The zero degree of colour A part that stands for the whole The Greek blue The demise of nuances Speaking of colours without showing them What is colour? Bibliography Index A few helpful chronological details