Gold, Violet, Black, Crimson, White

The early days of cinema certainly weren't black and white, and if the films were silent, the audiences were anything but. This spellbinding book reveals just what was seen - and heard, and said - in the picture houses of Britain at that time. It is a gaudy, raucous, rancorous, glorious world. And it is the world into which Five Nights emerged. Hugely controversial, and the subject of a bitter court case, that film hasn't been seen for a hundred years. But in these pages it comes to life again. Drawing on long-forgotten documents, David Hewitt reconstructs the film and places it in a setting of his own creation, in the process holding up a kaleidoscope from a different age. There are actors and actresses here, film producers and film directors. But there are suffragettes and Zeppelins as well, Pimple and Winky, Chinese women - both real and imagined - and countless men trying to make you think they are Charlie Chaplin. This is a heady world, where everyone speaks at once and a young woman can direct a film of her own. But anyone can lose everything at the whim of a constable or a magistrate - or at the hands of an angry mob. It is a world of eyots and dulcitones, psalterium, imortelles and bhang. You might think it a familiar world, but it has surely never seemed so strange. The author, David Hewitt, can be found on his Twitter handle: @historycalled