Let $mathbf{k} := (k_1,dots,k_s)$ be a sequence of natural numbers. For a graph $G$, let $F(G;mathbf{k})$ denote the number of colourings of the edges of $G$ with colours $1,dots,s$ such that, for every $c in {1,dots,s}$, the edges of colour $c$ contain no clique of order $k_c$. Write $F(n;mathbf{k})$ to denote the maximum of $F(G;mathbf{k})$ over all graphs $G$ on $n$ vertices. This problem was first considered by ErdH{o}s and Rothschild in 1974, but it has been solved only for a very small number of non-trivial cases. We prove that, for every $mathbf{k}$ and $n$, there is a complete multipartite graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with $F(G;mathbf{k}) = F(n;mathbf{k})$. Also, for every $mathbf{k}$ we construct a finite optimisation problem whose maximum is equal to the limit of $log_2 F(n;mathbf{k})/{nchoose 2}$ as $n$ tends to infinity. Our final result is a stability theorem for complete multipartite graphs $G$, describing the asymptotic structure of such $G$ with $F(G;mathbf{k}) = F(n;mathbf{k}) cdot 2^{o(n^2)}$ in terms of solutions to the optimisation problem.
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