* Why does Lynx not display things in colour?

 If you find that lynx does display things in colour, you may be using
 the wrong terminal type. The terminal type "vt100" does not support
 colour, but "linux" "xterm-color" and "xterm-debian" do.

 Alternatively, you can invoke lynx as 'lynx -color' or set 
 the COLORTERM environment variable to force the use of colours.

* How do I get a white background on black text?

 Use the following 'COLOR' definitions in your /etc/lynx.cfg file:

 COLOR:0:black:white
 COLOR:1:blue:white
 COLOR:2:yellow:blue
 COLOR:3:green:white
 COLOR:4:magenta:white
 COLOR:5:blue:white
 COLOR:6:red:white
 COLOR:7:magenta:cyan

* Very nice, but I run a multi-user system and I want to be able to configure
  colours on a per-user basis.

 Quoting from the /etc/lynx.cfg file:

 Starting with Lynx 2.8.1, the lynx.cfg file has a crude "include"
 facility.  This means that you can take advantage of the global lynx.cfg
 while also supplying your own tweaks.

 You can use a command-line argument (-cfg /where/is/lynx.cfg) or an
 environment variable (LYNX_CFG=/where/is/lynx.cfg).
 For instance, put in your .profile or .login:

   LYNX_CFG=~/lynx.cfg; export LYNX_CFG   # in .profile for sh/ksh/bash/etc.
   setenv LYNX_CFG ~/lynx.cfg             # in .login for [t]csh

 Then in ~/lynx.cfg:

 INCLUDE:/etc/lynx.cfg
 
 and now your own tweaks.