Margaret Busby’s Part of the Story (Hamish Hamilton, 2026)

This substantial collection gathers her journalism, reviews, speeches, tributes and cultural commentary from the late 1960s to the present, offering a portrait of Busby herself, and simultaneously, a panoramic view of Black British and diasporic writing and publishing across five decades.

What comes through clearly is a collection which serves as a historical document and a personal anthology – an archive of a life lived in and through literature.

A woman of firsts

Born in Accra, Ghana, to a family whose roots stretch across Barbados, Trinidad and Dominica, Margaret Busby CBE, Hon. FRSL (Nana Akua Ackon) would go on to make British publishing history. In 1967, still in her early twenties, she co-founded Allison & Busby with Clive Allison, becoming the country’s youngest – and its first Black woman – book publisher.

As this woman of firsts explained to this writer several years ago with characteristic humour and candour: “We started off with virtually no money. We printed 15,000 paperback poetry books priced at 5 shillings, and our idea of distribution was stopping people on the street and asking them to buy our books.”

It is a story that captures both the idealism and the sheer determination that defined her entry into the industry.

Over the next two decades, Busby moulded Allison & Busby into one of the most distinctive independent presses in Britain. As editorial director, she published a remarkable list of writers whose work would become central to Black British and diasporic literature. Among the standout titles were Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen, C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins, and George Lamming’s The Pleasures of Exile.

Although A&B never positioned itself as a specifically Black publishing house, Busby’s editorial vision made it a vital platform for writers from the African diaspora at a time when mainstream British publishing offered few such outlets. Other authors she championed included Val Wilmer, Miyamoto Musashi, Michele Roberts, Rosa Guy, and Andrew Salkey, further demonstrating the breadth of her literary interests.

After leaving A&B, Busby continued to shape the publishing landscape as editorial director of Earthscan, before moving into a wide-ranging freelance career as an editor, writer, cultural commentator, and Booker Prize judge among other roles. She has edited two ground-breaking anthologies that together champion the work of over 400 women of African descent over several centuries: the publication of Daughters of Africa (1992) changed the literary landscape; its sequel, New Daughters of Africa (2019), seeded and launched the Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award, which annually funds a woman student from Africa to study at SOAS, University of London.  Her influence – across books, journalism, broadcasting and literary advocacy – has only grown in the years since, marking her as one of the most enduring and transformative figures in contemporary British literature.

Phases in the professional and intellectual journey

Part of the Story is organised into five chronological sections, each marking a distinct phase in Busby’s professional and intellectual journey.

Threaded throughout the book is a recurring timeline of Black women in writing and publishing. It starts in 1746 with Lucy Terry’s Bars Fight, the earliest known poem by an African American and includes Mary Seacole’s bestselling 1857 memoir and Claudia Jones’s founding of the West Indian Gazette in 1958, culminating in Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize for Beloved – who went on to win the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature. This vital timeline situates Busby’s own work within a centuries-long continuum of Black women who have written, published, edited and insisted on their place in literary history.

The opening section, 1960s to 1980s, titled The Girl from Ghana Goes into Publishing, traces her early years including the founding of Allison & Busby in 1967. Here, Busby’s authorial voice is youthful and energetic, with tales of other early Black publishers such as John La Rose, Jessica and Eric Huntley, Yvonne Collymore and Desmond Johnson.

The second section, 1990s: Going It Alone, reflects Busby’s shift into freelance work after two decades as A&B’s editorial director. The pieces here show her very broad range of topics: included are sharp and concise reviews of work written by Derek Walcott and Toni Morrison and her address to the 11th International Book Fair of Radical and Third World Books in 1993.

The third section, 2000–2009: All Singing, All Dancing, again showcases Busby’s incisive pen, commenting on concepts of identity and influence. She sheds valuable light on the lives of historical figures including Malcolm X, John La Rose, Roy Heath, and Michael X.

In the fourth section, 2010–2019: Around the World and Back Again, Busby’s global perspective comes even sharper into view by way of compelling obituaries on Ilan Halevi, Buchi Emecheta, Richard ‘Dick’ Hart, and Sam Greenlee among other work.

The final section, 2020s: Passing It On, thrusts the collection a little more firmly into the contemporary period. Busby is in reflective mode – meditating on her life in publishing and documenting the loss of her friend, the outstanding Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo. In the piece titled ‘What Needs to Happen to Create ‘Mainstreaming’ and Greater Choice of Books’ she raises pertinent and uncomfortable questions around diversity and inclusivity in the British literary milieu. It serves to confirm her role as a veteran who has not only shaped the literary establishment but continues to think deeply about how it might evolve for the betterment of communities who may not share the benefits of the mainstream.

What makes Part of the Story so compelling is the way it captures Busby’s commitment to widening the frame of British culture, and her instinct for recognising otherwise marginalised writers who have reshaped or are in the process of reshaping the British and global landscape of letters.

It is hoped that the “fuller story” will include her musings on jazz, of which she remains an avid enthusiast, having written lyrics for many jazz songs over the years. That more fleshed out story, one would imagine, should include her stories of encounters with people like Randy Weston, Abdullah Ibrahim, Nina Simone, Hugh Masekela and Helen Humes, to mention just a few storied jazz artistes.

Part of the Story nonetheless stands as a testament to a life spent actively expanding what and who counts in the world of literature.

Margaret Busby