Stories in Colour

Why do we see purple as the colour of royalty? It all starts on the Mediterranean coast with some unassuming, and eventually very unfortunate, seasnails.

Travel back to ancient times with colour specialist Victoria Finlay and National Gallery host Beks Leary to trace the story of Tyrian purple through time.

Victoria has written several books about colour – including 'Colour, Travels through the Paintbox' and 'The Brilliant History...

Where did all the colour go? And how might Western culture have feared it, or deemed it superficial, in art and philosophy? We celebrate the 25th anniversary of seminal book ‘Chromophobia’ with its author David Batchelor, who reflects on these ideas a quarter of a century on. 

David speaks to National Gallery host Beks Leary about ideas of colour from philosopher Plato and artist Paul Cezanne, to the film ‘The Wizard of Oz’, ph...

Why does the colour green remind you of poison and radioactivity? We're telling the story of two toxic green pigments to find out. Their stories interact with artists like Berthe Morisot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris, as well as the less likely figure of Napoleon Bonaparte. And we go for a very good nosy around Victorian libraries. 

Join cultural historian Kassia St Clair and National Gallery host Beks Leary to ask...

We're asking how we feel about colour – or more accurately how colours make us feel – and whether that's the same for all of us. 

Join colour specialist Zeynep Sagir and National Gallery host Beks Leary to get emotional about colour. Along the way, we talk about Pablo Picasso’s ‘Blue Period’ and Derek Jarman’s final film ‘Blue’, the calming green of John Constable’s ‘The Cornfield’, and Mark Rothko’s colour field abstractions. ...

We're on the search for the 'perfect red' with a pigment and dye that was so prized that it inspired international espionage and piracy, carried the death penalty if exported without a license, and built empires. But today you might find it in your strawberry yoghurt.  

This is the story of how bugs turned the world red with historian and writer Amy Butler Greenfield and National Gallery host Beks Leary. 

Amy is the gr...

Meet an enigmatic pigment discovered entirely by accident at the start of the 18th century. Its story involves a rogue inventor with an unlikely connection to Doctor Frankenstein, a characterful trio of Johanns, and a renowned Botticelli forgery. 

This pigment came to be known as Prussian blue or Berlin blue. Before its discovery, a range of blue pigments existed but each had a significant flaw: natural ultramarine was prohibit...

Welcome to Stories in Colour! We're starting at the very beginning to ask an age-old question: are the colours you see, the same as the colours I see?  

Join Professor Anya Hurlbert from Newcastle University and National Gallery host Beks Leary as they ask whether colour is real and how exactly we see it, stopping off to look at paintings from the National Gallery along the way. We go back to the viral dress that divided t...

How has colour changed the world? A vibrant new podcast from the National Gallery, Stories in Colour launches with our first two episodes on Wednesday 28 May 2025.

The Times ★★★★ ‘There’s lots to enjoy here.’ 

In each episode, we uncover the hidden mysteries woven into colour from antiquity to the present day. 

Along the way, you'll hear from curators, scientists, historians, artists, and more experts, looking at humanity’s...