Soundtrack John Williams: E,T, - The Extra-Terrestrial (LP)

The Secret Lives of Colour tells the unusual stories of the 75 most fascinating shades, dyes and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history. In this book Kassia St Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colours and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilisation. Across fashion and politics, art and war, The Secret Lives of Colour tell the vivid story of our culture

The five of them - Stella, Priss, Kay, Helena and Polly - met at university, their lives full of lazy afternoons and late nights. Friendship seemed simple and there was such pleasure in the endless talk and in just living alongside each other • Now the women are turning forty and they're finding that a shared past can sometimes be a burden. They're all struggling to navigate the ways in which their lives have differed from the plans they made themselves and the hopes they had for each other. In the past, solidarity came easily, but now they compare lovers, husbands, jobs, children and sofas, asking how the choices they've made or failed to make hold up • As marriages end and secrets emerge, they wonder whether these people, the ones who know so much about them, are really the ones they can confide in

In 1999 a programmer is trying to fix the millennium bug, but can't shake the sense he's been chosen for something • In 1888 five women are brutally murdered in the East End by a troubled young man in thrall to a mysterious master • In 1777 an apprentice engraver called William Blake has a defining spiritual experience; thirteen years later this vision returns • And in 1666 poet and revolutionary John Milton completes the epic for which he will be remembered centuries later • But where does the feeling come from that the world is about to end?