Illuminating
the overlooked
and everyday
through
historical
storytelling. 

The-golden-thread-books-banner.png

Overview.

Kassia St. Clair is an acclaimed author and storyteller and the UK’s best selling historian under 40. She specialises in telling illuminating stories about the overlooked and the everyday.

She has sold hundreds of thousands of books globally and is best known for The Secret Lives of Colour.

Kassia is valued for her thoughtful use of historical details that make ambitious and technical subjects accessible and memorable. Her writing is sumptuous, witty and a joy to read.

Kassia’s readers find themselves learning new and unexpected things about the world and how the everyday came to be.

The secret lives of colour.png

  • “Even Farrow & Ball don’t know as much about colour as Kassia St Clair”

    Times Literary Supplement

  • “A skillful researcher as well as a fine storyteller”

    Miranda Seymour in the Literary Review

  • “St. Clair’s descriptions of textiles and the people who created and wore them are sensual and even moving”

    The New Yorker

Discover Kassia’s work:

  • Author Kassia St Clair holding a copy of The Golden Thread

    Books.

    Buy The Secret Lives of Colour, The Golden Thread and The Race to the Future.

    Buy

  • Podcast.

    The Blue Plaque Pod, your new favourite history podcast.

    Listen

  • Talks.

    Find out more about upcoming in-person and online talks.

    View

  • Writing.

    A selection of published essays, criticism, profiles and long reads.

    Read
Race-to-the-future.png

About.

Kassia St. Clair is a bestselling writer and cultural historian. Her first book, The Secret Lives of Colour, was a top-ten bestseller, was selected as Radio 4′s Book of the Week and has been translated into twenty languages. The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Sunday Times Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Somerset Maugham Award. Her third book The Race to the Future is out now in the UK, the US and the Netherlands.

Features, interviews, essays and reviews have appeared in the Economist, the Telegraph, Architectural Digest, the TLS and Wired; she had written about colour and textiles for Elle Decoration for over a decade. You can see a selection of her published work on the journalism page.

An accomplished speaker, Kassia has given talks at international venues including the Dallas Art Museum, Hay Festival, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Soho House and for brands including Chanel, Farrow & Ball and Christie’s. She has contributed to NPR, BBC Radio 4, and CNN. In 2018 she created an exhibit for Color Factory, New York. To find out more, visit the Talks page.

To hear about current projects, upcoming events and stories that got her thinking, sign up to her newsletter.