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Rearview Mirror Chronicles
Keith Hockton, FRAS, is a publisher, podcaster, writer and author based in Penang, Malaysia. He is South East Asian Editor for International Living, a lifestyle based magazine. He lectures internationally on history and Malaysia (political and economic), and is passionate about making history fun and accessible to all. Keith is a Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
His published books include:
• Atlas of Australian Dive Sites - Travellers Edition (Harper Collins Australia, 2003).
• Penang - An inside guide to its historic homes, buildings, monuments and parks (MPH Publishing, 2012; 2nd Edition 2014; 3rd Edition 2017).
• Festivals of Malaysia (Trafalgar Publishing, 2015).
• The Habitat Penang Hill: A pocket history (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)
• Alana and the Secret Life of Trees at Night (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)
• Penang Then & Now: A Century of Change in Pictures (Entrepot Publishing, 2019; 2nd Edition 2021)
• Bersama Lima - Five Together (Entrepot Publishing, 2022)
Rearview Mirror Chronicles
Newton’s Eye and Homer’s Sky
In the 1660s, Isaac Newton sat alone in the dark… and slid a needle behind his eyeball — not out of madness, but to unlock the secrets of light.
Centuries earlier, Homer described the ocean not as blue, but “wine-dark.” In fact, in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the colour blue doesn’t exist. It’s never mentioned. Not once.
That strange absence haunted William Gladstone. As a scholar—and Prime Minister—he scoured the ancient world’s most sacred texts: the Bible, the Vedas, the Koran. Still no blue. Only the Egyptians, obsessed with the afterlife, spoke of it — as if they alone could see it. Why?
Because colour isn’t just in the world. It’s in the mind. Filtered through the fragile lenses of our eyes. Shaped by evolution. Warped by biology. You see three cones of colour. A dog sees two. A Mantis shrimp sees sixteen!
The truth is chilling: we don’t see the world as it is — only as we’re built to perceive it. This is the story of a colour that didn’t exist... until we learned to name it.