Morocco Blues: why and how the country changed colour

This lecture draws on Elizabeth’s time in Morocco in visits spanning more

than 25 years. The lecture focuses particularly on the stories behind the blue

pigment used for the fishing boats and doorways of photogenic Essaouira on

the Moroccan coast, and the Majorelle Blue developed and patented by

French artist Jacques Majorelle in Marrakech in the 1920s. The story of

Morocco’s blues takes us from Berber veils to Yves Saint-Laurent who

restored Majorelle’s Marrakech garden, via Modernist Orientalist art and a

protected mollusk…

Elizabeth studied at Magdalen College Oxford before training as a teacher and working

in Lambeth, Hackney and Islington. Moved to Kosovo in 2006 and there

worked with the Ethnological Museum in Prishtina and co-founded ‘The Ideas

Partnership’, a charity working on education and cultural heritage projects.

Speaks fluent Albanian and has translated two books (the unauthorised

biography of Yugoslavia’s longest-held political prisoner, Adem Demaci, and

the memoirs of one of the leaders of the 1912 uprising). Also the author of

four books about Kosovo – Travels in Blood and Honey; becoming a

beekeeper in Kosovo (2011), Edith and I; on the trail of an Edwardian traveller

in Kosovo (2013); The Rubbish-Picker’s Wife; an unlikely friendship in

Kosovo (2015) and The Silver Thread; a journey through Balkan craftmanship

(2017). Her latest book (2022 - with Robert Wilton) is No Man's Lands: 8

extraordinary women in Balkan history. Regular contributor to Radio 4

(Saturday Live, Excess Baggage, From Our Own Correspondent) and the

BBC World Service. She has worked as a member of the advisory board of

GuideKS, the NGO for Kosovan tour guides, and of the board of Faktoje, the

Albanian fact-checking organisation.