Jewels: A Secret History

'Glorious . . . anecdote and information accumulate with marvellous abundance and a passionate sense of the fascination of jewels' Spectator

Amber is the tears of prehistoric trees.

One gem links Queen Victoria and a skeleton.

Cleopatra drank a pearl to win a bet.

A man turned into a diamond.

When we put on jewels, what are we really wearing?

Victoria Finlay travels the world to tell the true stories of these miraculous oddities of nature.

'Filled with eye-catching incidents and stories . . . Finlay's evidence glitters from every page' Sunday Telegraph

'A fascinating and exhaustive travelogue' Times Literary Supplement

“A beautiful book. Reading it is, in fact, very much like dipping into a jewel box and pulling out curious and brilliant things, different each time but always fascinating.”

Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lover
Filled with eye-catching incidents and stories . . . Finlay's evidence glitters from every page. -- Lawrence Norfolk Sunday Telegraph
Glorious . . . anecdote and information accumulate with marvellous abundance and a passionate sense of the fascination of jewels . . . a wonderfully generous gift -- John de Falbe Spectator
A fascinating and exhaustive travelogue . . . a prism through which the spectrum of history, geography and the sciences is refracted -- Anna Swan Times Literary Supplement
As a first glimpse into the jewel trade, rich, ancient and bloody, it could hardly be bettered The Tablet
Her skill, as in her previous anatomy of colour, is to thread together brittle facts and theories with her own self-deprecating travelogue, creating a compelling excavation of the pieces of earth we covet so much. Even if your budget is more Elizabeth Duke than Tiffany, this is an accessible treasure trove of knowledge and adventure. Daily Telegraph
Packed full of incident and anecdote and minutely researched, it's a compact history of some of our favourite bits of bling, a fascinating book, whether you read from cover to cover or just dip in here and there. Irish Times
Because she focuses on people, whether Scottish freshwater pearl fishermen or Apache peridot miners, this is an engaging, glistening read. Because she always returns to the question of why jewels are valued, and how that value is upheld, it is also very thought-provoking. Finlay has a fine eye for curious facts . . . she writes crisply and well. The Times

Victoria Finlay worked as a journalist in Hong Kong for eleven years, five of which were spent as arts editor for the South China Morning Post. Colour was her first book; since then she has also written Jewels: A Secret History, A Brilliant History of Color in Art, and Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World. She studied social anthropology and as well as travelling around the world in search of stories about her subjects, from pigments to jewels to art to fabric, has also worked for an international environment charity. She lives near Bath.

'Glorious . . . anecdote and information accumulate with marvellous abundance and a passionate sense of the fascination of jewels' Spectator Amber is the tears of prehistoric trees.One gem links Queen Victoria and a skeleton.Cleopatra drank a pearl to win a bet. A man turned into a diamond.When we put on jewels, what are we really wearing?Victoria Finlay travels the world to tell the true stories of these miraculous oddities of nature. 'Filled with eye-catching incidents and stories . . . Finlay's evidence glitters from every page' Sunday Telegraph 'A fascinating and exhaustive travelogue' Times Literary Supplement

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