Feeling Blue

Feeling blue is the first historical study of colour in modern British hospitals. The book uses colour to understand the layered meanings of modernity in twentieth-century Britain and its relationship to the 'mundane' or everyday life of hospitals. Colour has long been a crucial part of hospital design and the daily activity of hospitals, from the uniforms that mark out different jobs, to the colour schemes that sort hospital waste. Despite this importance, the history of hospital colour is often overlooked as a subject of study. This book examines colour in relation to six key themes - hygiene, emotion, humanisation, homeliness, play and consumerism - which are tied together by the idea of the 'modern' hospital. Feeling blue opens important new understandings of a wide range of subjects including histories of emotions, health, politics, design, architecture, culture and society, and offers a new framework for thinking about 'modernity' and change over time.