* The Sunday Times * A feisty study of red hair through the ages. Emma Jane Unsworth * The Big Issue * An entertaining romp through the meaning and mythology of red hair. It is also the perfect gift idea for any redheads in your life (you're welcome).

Red is an engaging read, playful and smart, packed with facts but never boggy with them. * Guardian * Red is an important, fascinating read for redheads - and others - everywhere. * Country Life * Jacky Colliss Harvey sets out to discover everything - what it takes to make a redhead, where in the world they come from and why they exist at all. A colorful take on human perceptions and beliefs. * Irish Examiner * Harvey uses her hair color as a lens to explore the history of mankind. * Oldie * Red: A Natural History of the Redhead examines the history of red hair through the ages, as well as focusing on modern-day attitudes to people with red hair. Jacky Collis Harvey is especially informative on red hair in painting. * The Wall Street Journal (Europe) * She is as comfortable with the science as she is with cultural history. intellectually wide-ranging and searching when it comes to issues of discrimination. * Press Association * A light touch and a lively style. * East Aglian * Jacky Colliss Harvey - herself a redhead - does a good job of trouncing some of the most flagrant myths. * The Times Literary Supplement * Red: A Natural History of the Redhead looks at the influence and symbolism of red hair through the ages and in aspects of life such as science, religion, politics, feminism and sexuality, advertising, literature and art. 'Elizabeth I paraded her hair not only as a sign of the Tudor rose and St George, but of her royal paternity, presenting her head, in all its accouterments, as if on a platter, and so transforming a death-like punishment into an irrefutable riposte to her enemies should the thought arise regarding her right to rule.Harvey is eloquent on the cultural expectations that surround redheads. And if you want to place the point at which attitudes toward red hair in men and women begin to radically diverge, likewise. Her theories are ambitious yet compelling: 'The redheaded Magdalene, as Western art and literature has created her, …the single most important reason why Western attitudes toward redheaded men and redheaded women diverge so thoroughly,' she writes elsewhere: ' you want to look for reasons for the continuing and increasing antipathy towards redheads in medieval Europe, in particular redheaded men, look no further than its anti-Semitism.

She writes eloquently, sometimes humorously, often rousingly, her statements empowered by an authoritative command of her material.

Red a natural history of the redhead