Margaret Busby – A lot more than two for one

Margaret Busby, more than just Britain's first black publisher - and its youngest

As much as the woman herself would wish it otherwise, it’s pretty safe to say that the first line of Margaret Busby’s obituary has already been written. “Britain’s first black woman publisher,” it is sure to begin.

But Busby’s multifaceted career has spanned the worlds of publishing, journalism and the arts – and her success has owed far more to factors beyond merely her colour or gender. One therefore gets the sense that she finds it just the slightest bit jarring that any assessment of her seems stuck at two of her most eye-wateringly obvious characteristics.

Uh huh, Busby is black. And female to boot. You almost expect her to tell you to just get over it. “It’s not as if I wake up every morning and look in the mirror and go: ‘Oh no, black again,’” she laughs.

Born in Ghana in the 1940s (“I’m not telling you how old I am”), Busby moved to England at the age of eight. In the late Sixties she set up publishing company Allison and Busby (the first black woman, but also the youngest person to do so) and went on to become a public figure in her own right, sitting on panels and committees too numerous to mention, as what she describes as a “twofor [the price of one]” – bestowing on them the dual box-ticks of her black and female status.

But striking as Busby’s achievements have been, it seems clear that she would have liked to have achieved a great deal more. Railing against those who pigeonhole her, she says: “I review books for the Guardian and Independent. Only once have I been asked to review a book not by a black person.”

She adds: “I have an English degree. I know about Shakespeare and Milton, but it’s as if I only know the black canon.”

And before you think her expertise is confined to literature, let it be known that the passions and interests of Margaret Busby extend beyond those limits as well. “I love music” she enthuses. She was married to a jazz musician, and nonchalantly drops into the conversation that she lunches with the likes of Stevie Wonder. It all makes the fact that she’s a cousin of legendary newsreader Moira Stuart seem almost incidental.

But Busby’s assessment of herself is unselfconscious and succinct. “Call me an ex-publisher. Or an unemployed layabout,” she says. “I don’t care.”