Book Review: Red: A Natural History Of the Redhead by Jacky Colliss Harvey

Hardback by Allen & Unwin, £16.99 (ebook £10)

“She’ll steal your man,” hissed a co-worker on the first morning of my first-ever office job. If I’d had Jacky Colliss Harvey’s new book Red to hand, it would have given my younger self a better understanding of why this woman felt she had the right to judge me so quickly.

Redheads make up two per cent of the world’s population, many of them concentrated in the Irish and Scottish diasporas. Art historian Jacky Colliss Harvey – herself a redhead – does a good job of trouncing some of the most flagrant myths.

For example, we’re not all descended from Vikings, and we’re not going to die out. But any brief survey of two per cent of humanity is bound to contain omissions, and in that way contribute a few myths of its own.

For example, she maintains that gingerism is less prevalent in the United States than in the UK. I beg to differ. Dolly Parton’s Jolene, anyone? Or Truman Capote’s memorably trashy murderess Ann Cutler?