Colours of danger and warning

The ancient Egyptians called the desert deshret, the red land. Red was the colour of the god Set, of chaos and of danger, and scribes wrote unlucky words in red ink.

In the last part of a bullfight the matador uses a small red cape, the muleta. Bulls do not see red as we do. It is the movement that draws them, and the colour hides the blood.

Each November people pin on a red paper poppy to remember those killed in war. The flower grew on the battlefields of Flanders in the First World War.

Orange and black are the colours of Halloween, 31 October: orange for pumpkins and autumn leaves, black for night.

A crime novel or thriller is called a giallo, a yellow. The name comes from the yellow covers of a series of mysteries that Mondadori began publishing in 1929.

On the south coast of Java, visitors are warned not to wear green to the beach. Folk belief holds that it is the colour of Nyai Roro Kidul, the Queen of the Southern Sea, who takes those who wear it.

Brown is the colour of Nazism in German political speech, after the brown shirts of the party's stormtroopers. To call a view "brown" is to call it far right.

The Blackshirts were the armed squads of Mussolini's Fascist movement. Black shirts were later copied by fascist groups in other countries.