Margaret Busby

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:41

My castaway this week is the publisher and editor Margaret Busby. Her trailblazing career began when she was just 23 and keen to publish the kinds of books that she and her young friends wanted to read. She co-founded Allison and Busby, the publishing house that still bears her name, and made history as both the youngest person and first black woman to set up her own press. As well as spending 20 years at its helm, she worked as a playwright, journalist and editor. In 1992, she created the landmark anthology Daughters of Africa, pulling together writings by women of African descent from ancient Egypt onwards. Many of today's literary leading lights cite it as a major influence. So when she heard it had gone out of print 25 years later, she decided to do it again, and New Daughters of Africa was published in 2019.

Presenter1:33

The author Zadie Smith describes her as a cheerleader, instigator and celebrator of black arts for the past fifty years, shouting about us from the rooftops even back when few people cared to listen. She remains an ardent champion of great literature and spent lockdown reading one hundred and sixty two novels as chair of the twenty twenty Booker Prize jury.

Presenter1:55

She says, It's astonishing what you can do when you don't care who gets the credit. Margaret Busby, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. You were chair of last year's Booker Prize jury, which came up with one of the most varied shortlists in the prize's history. Four of the six shortlisted books were by writers of black, Asian, and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the winning novel was Douglas Stewart's Suggie Bane about a gay working-class boy growing up in Glasgow, partly inspired by his own childhood. How was it pulling that shortlist together? I think you have to give credit to the

Margaret Busby2:26

people who chose the judges, if you like, because it was s a very diverse group of judges, if you like, diverse in terms of the fact that it had people of different ages, people from different

Margaret Busby2:38

Areas, different backgrounds, people who are readers, people who are editors, people who are reviewers, people who are writers.

Margaret Busby2:45

We all came together from different perspectives, and we were all looking to agree on what we thought was the best book. But it was wonderful to find that we all did agree on the long list, the short list, and the eventual

Presenter2:59

Judging during a pandemic, how did that work? So all online, all on Zoom, presumably?

Margaret Busby3:04

It was all

Presenter3:04

Yeah.

Margaret Busby3:04

Hold on, June. We I think we had an initial meeting before lockdown, but then we weren't all in the same room then, because not all the judges live in in Britain, but we just were all doing our best, hour after hour, month after month, to undertake and and deliver a verdict that we all agreed with and we all are proud of.

Presenter3:27

I think we did that. So, desk number one, then, if you wouldn't mind, tell us a little bit about your first choice today and why you've chosen it.

Margaret Busby3:34

Well, the first choice for My Desert Island is is Seven Seconds, which is a song that's performed by Yusuindo and Nenicheri, and I've chosen it because I remember

Margaret Busby3:47

Hearing it's

Margaret Busby3:49

at a concert that was part of Africa Ninety Five, which was an initiative that happened over a season in Britain around the country, and there was a concert at which Yusu Indoor was performing.

Margaret Busby4:01

And I was watching him in a a group of friends. Everything just seemed right. And this is a song that brings me back to that moment. But but apart from that, the words are just so

Margaret Busby4:14

telling and so important and there's a line I particularly like when a child is born into this world it has no concept of the tone the skin is living in and that's to tell you that everything we know about prejudice and and racial discrimination is not born with us we learn it

Margaret Busby4:39

Into this world, it has no concept.

Margaret Busby4:43

Of the tone that

Speaker 44:44

The skin is living in it's not a second, we're seven seconds away

Speaker 44:52

Yeah.

Speaker 14:52

A useless loan disaster

Speaker 44:54

See me

Speaker 14:56

Yeah.

Speaker 44:56

I'll be waiting. Waiting.

Speaker 44:59

It's not a second, we're seven seconds away

Speaker 45:04

Or just as long as I stay

Presenter5:07

Seven seconds, Yusundor with Nena Cherry. So Margaret Busby, you were born in Ghana in the nineteen forties. What memories do you have of your earliest days there?

Margaret Busby5:17

My father was a doctor in what we call the bush, in the rural areas, but occasionally we came up to the capital La Croix because he had to buy drugs and so on. And in the bush we had none of the conveniences of modern life. We didn't have

Margaret Busby5:33

running water that came out of the tap when you turned a tap. We didn't have electricity that you had when you put on a switch. We had paraffin lamps to get light.

Presenter5:43

Margaret, you mentioned that your father is a doctor, and preparing for today I found a lovely video clip online. You're there in Walthamstowe in London, paying tribute to him, doctor George Busby, and unveiling a blue plaque.

Presenter5:56

That was put in his honour there for his work as a GP in the 1920s. Tell me more about him and more about that story and his connection to that area.

Margaret Busby6:04

Well, my father was actually born in Barbados, and his father was a tailor. And when my father was a few weeks old,

Margaret Busby6:13

The family moved to Trinidad, so my father grew up in Trinidad.

Margaret Busby6:17

And his father took him when he was a young boy to show him the premier school in Port of Spain, the capital, which was called Queen's Royal College, and said to my father, If you want to go to this school and get a proper education, you have to be bright and win scholarships. So that's what my father did. He won a scholarship to Queen's Royal College, where he made lifelong friends, including C. L. R. James, who was a

Margaret Busby6:42

Historian. Became a a well-known historian, but my father then won what was called the Island Scholarship.

Margaret Busby6:49

which meant that he could go and study in Britain,

Margaret Busby6:52

which he did in nineteen nineteen. He left Trinidad, he came to Britain. He studied first of all at the University of Edinburgh. Then he went to Dublin and he qualified as a doctor from Dublin.

Margaret Busby7:05

and he then went to practice as a doctor in Walthamstone in London.

Margaret Busby7:10

in a working class area. And he was there for ten years or so. He was there until nineteen twenty nine.'Cause this was way before the National Health Service. So he told me that there was a barter system so that the butcher used to pay him in pork chops.

Presenter7:26

His path must have been very unusual at the time. What did he tell you about his experiences while he was training and in the early days of his career?

Margaret Busby7:33

He wasn't one that had the spotlight focus on himself, but I remember bits and pieces. Like, for example, he told me when he was in Dublin, a nickname he was given was Burnt Cork.

Margaret Busby7:44

which I guess was a reference to his skin colour. Wow. But uh he you know, that was no no big deal. And he went to Ghana, or the Gold Coast, as it was then, at a time when there were a handful of other

Margaret Busby7:58

Doctors and lawyers and professional people from the West Indies who were, I suppose, part of that Pan-African movement.

Margaret Busby8:06

Pooh

Margaret Busby8:07

Became like extended family. They were like my extended family, if you like. It's time for some more music, Margaret. Tell me about your next disc.

Margaret Busby8:15

Well, I'd like to take a disc which to me reminds me a bit of that Trinidadian heritage as well as the connection that my father had with C. L. R. James that led to my publishing C. L. R. James, because C. L. R. James wrote an iconic, a really important book called The Black Jacobins, which was about the Haitian Revolution.

Margaret Busby8:38

And there's a Calypsonian called David Rudder who wrote a very perceptive soca tune called Haiti, I am Sorry.

Margaret Busby8:47

which was dealing with the legacy of what happened after the

Margaret Busby8:51

Haitian Revolution

Margaret Busby8:53

And the sufferings that Haiti is still subject to up to the present day. And I remember I don't know whether I imagined this, but I think I remember listening to this.

Margaret Busby9:03

song with C L R James.

Margaret Busby9:06

And he

Margaret Busby9:08

made a point of saying, Listen to the first two lines, Toussaint was a mighty man, and to make matters worse, he was black.

Margaret Busby9:16

is talking about Sousin Louverture who was behind the Haitian Revolution.

Margaret Busby9:21

He was a mighty man, and to make matters worse, he was black.

Margaret Busby9:26

Back and back in the days when black men knew their place was in the bag.

Margaret Busby9:32

But this remember he walked through Napoleon who thought it wasn't very nice And so do they my brothers and Haiti

Margaret Busby9:40

To be the prize

Speaker 19:43

Yeah.

Speaker 19:44

Yeah

Speaker 19:46

Katie, I'm sorry.

Presenter9:49

Katie David Rudder. So Margaret Busby, I have to ask you about your mother then, Sarah. She also worked in healthcare, like your father. She left Ghana to train as a midwife in Edinburgh in the nineteen thirties before returning home. That seems like quite an adventurous thing to do back then. She must have been a very dynamic person.

Presenter10:08

My mother in the 30s

Margaret Busby10:11

Came to Britain.

Margaret Busby10:13

She came to London. She actually trained at

Margaret Busby10:17

Queen Mary's Hospital for Six Children in Carsholton in Surrey.

Margaret Busby10:21

And she also trained as a midwife in in Scotland, and she I remember her telling me about the fact that uh she had to go and deliver children in little villages where they'd never seen any black people before, and she was called Black E Nurse.

Margaret Busby10:37

She then went back to Ghana and she was a nursing sister at Achimoto School. My mother was a practical person. My mother was the person who made sure that she found somehow the money to make sure her children's school fees were paid, even if it meant that she only had one dress that she wore in the day and washed at night and more the next day.

Margaret Busby11:00

She wanted us to know how to play the piano. In fact, she bought us a piano. My earlier school days were spent trying to learn the piano. In fact, I won a certificate at the Hastings Music Festival.

Presenter11:13

So your parents worked together in the the rural areas surrounding Suhum in Ghana. Tell me a little bit more about their practice. You said no mod cons. How busy were they?

Speaker 111:18

Tell me

Presenter11:23

They were busy

Margaret Busby11:23

My father went on trek, as they put it, to villages where there were no medical facilities. My father had a dispensary in Sohum. In fact, some of my earliest memories as as my sister was helping in the dispensary, wrapping up ointment in bits of paper or or sticking labels on bottles. So there were lots of practical things that had to be done. There were no easy solutions.

Presenter11:50

Time for your third disc today, Margaret. What are we going to hear next, and why?

Margaret Busby11:53

Well, I spoke about my mother wanting us to learn to play the piano, and I remember learning

Margaret Busby12:01

A Bach Prelude in C.

Margaret Busby12:04

which is something on which the Guno Ave Maria was based, and so whenever I hear that I can hear my mother's voice in my head singing along.

Margaret Busby12:14

My mother had a wonderful voice, but she never used it professionally because she was doing her medical work.

Speaker 412:36

Oh till you're in the middle of the day.

Speaker 112:44

Only must be cool.

Presenter13:17

Arve Maria by Gouneau, sung by Kathleen Battle with the Orchestra of Saint Luke's, conducted by Leonard Slatking.

Presenter13:24

Margaret Busby, your parents then sent you and your brother and sister to boarding schools in the UK. So you and your sister Eileen were together. You went to Charters Towers boarding school for girls in Bexhill-on-Sea. What were your first impressions of the place? You were very little, I think, when you arrived.

Margaret Busby13:40

Yeah.

Margaret Busby13:41

In fact, my mother had trouble finding a a school that would take us. And I remember her saying that she would speak to the head mistresses or whoever and they'd say, Well, we don't mind, but it's the parents of the other girls who might mind. But eventually Charters Towers School in Bexinse took us and the headmistress was a extraordinary woman called Eileen McGarry, who was really progressive and it was an international school.

Margaret Busby14:06

And the deputy headmistress was was called Margaret Steinitz. And I remember meeting Gary, as she was called, the headmistress, on her hundredth birthday, just a few years ago. She died when she was a hundred and two. And Gary said, Well, although you were so young, I I think I was eight and you were younger than we would normally have uh allowed a pupil to be to take her on, but because you were Margaret

Margaret Busby14:31

And your sister's Eileen?

Margaret Busby14:33

And I was idioting our deputy was Margaret, we said, We've got to take them. They're hiding in Margaret.

Presenter14:37

Never had you.

Margaret Busby14:39

So it was fate that brought you there. I was the youngest in the school and I was holding my own and, you know, I I did find my old school report um recently and it talked about, you know, Margaret's not doing badly sort of thing, but she's a bit untidy in the dormitory, so what's changed? Nothing much.

Margaret Busby14:57

So I I was at Charter's Towers with some wonderful friends from all over the world, with Eileen as well. Eileen was always by my side. But we had other s children from around the world, so

Margaret Busby15:10

I learned to count in Farsi and and to swear in Mandarin and things. I've never tried to

Presenter15:16

Never dared try out. You must have missed home. You must have missed your parents. Obviously, presumably it was very helpful having your sister with you. But what do you remember about the huge change from growing up in home at your parents' medical practice to suddenly being at a boarding school in Becks Hill? It must have been another world.

Margaret Busby15:34

I suppose it was another world, but the thing is, when you're a school child, you you don't have anything to compare it with. You that's the schooling you had. And we had fun, we had friends, but I realized much later that the one who was actually having the hard time was my mother because I found letters from her

Margaret Busby15:54

And she would always send us lots of wonderful letters with new Ghana stamps on, first day covers, keeping in touch with us. And I remember reading letters from her that said, How tall are you now?

Margaret Busby16:05

Uh

Margaret Busby16:06

And so I suddenly realized very late that she was the one having a hard time. She h didn't know how tall her children were. All right, Margaret, let's take a break for some music. This is disc number four. Why have you chosen it?

Margaret Busby16:21

Stevie Wonders Visions. Now I could really have chosen eight tracks by Stevie, because Stevie has been such an important figure in my life, in my sister's life, in the life of my family, my friends, and he was somebody who I first met I suppose, or my sister first met in the 1970s.

Margaret Busby16:43

Because we were both doing freelance work for the BBC African Service, and he remained.

Margaret Busby16:50

In touch, supportive.

Margaret Busby16:52

And on the

Margaret Busby16:54

Day my sister died last year.

Margaret Busby16:58

Stevie

Margaret Busby16:59

Sent a message to Andre saying let Eileen hear this.

Margaret Busby17:06

And it was

Margaret Busby17:08

A video of him singing Visions.

Margaret Busby17:11

which he sent.

Margaret Busby17:13

to Eileen, who just

Margaret Busby17:16

An hour before she died.

Margaret Busby17:21

Den

Margaret Busby17:25

Uh

Speaker 117:25

Yeah, but

Margaret Busby17:25

Live design

Speaker 117:27

See the Yeah.

Margaret Busby17:28

Yeah.

Speaker 117:29

Honey lamb

Speaker 117:32

Where hate's a dream and love forever stand

Speaker 117:40

Was this a vision in my mind

Presenter17:49

Stevie Wonder and Visions. Tell me a little bit more about your further education. I know you studied English at Bedford College, which was part of the University of London. What about your peer group, Margaret, at the time? I mean, on your course, for example. This is London in the very early sixties. Were there many other black students along with you?

Margaret Busby18:07

I can remember, for example, in my year at Bedford reading English, I was the only black woman. It was

Presenter18:14

Women's College. It also could be a barrier to finding rental accommodation and things like that. Did you ever have to manage those kinds of situations?

Margaret Busby18:23

Uh Thanks somewhere

Presenter18:23

Uh

Margaret Busby18:23

Uh Uh

Presenter18:23

Yeah.

Margaret Busby18:23

rent some no, not to rent. Finding somewhere to live was a problem. I remember I I stayed in all sorts of different places when I was at university. I I stayed in a private hotel and I remember then I couldn't afford to have a sandwich as well as take the bus to my lectures, so I had to choose either or. I remember another time I stayed with a an actress who

Speaker 118:40

This

Margaret Busby18:46

had a spare room for a while, and on another occasion I had nowhere to stay, and so I went up to Cambridge and I climbed over the wall and stayed with my fiancee. It was all an era of

Margaret Busby19:00

No?

Margaret Busby19:01

People not wanting to accommodate black people. And so that was.

Margaret Busby19:05

happening at the same time as I was trying to

Margaret Busby19:08

get through my

Margaret Busby19:10

Course and get a degree. That was the era we were in. Were you inured to it or were you angry about it, hurt by it?

Margaret Busby19:18

I think always in those situations you have to choose which battles you fight. I could have fought a battle every day, all day, but I was focused on what I was doing. I was associating with people who didn't believe

Margaret Busby19:30

there was anything wrong with being black, so it wasn't something that I ha I had to deal with on a daily, intimate basis. And what I was doing was more important than worrying about what people thought about me.

Presenter19:44

Margaret, it's time for your next piece of music. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen it today? The next trick I'd like to hear.

Margaret Busby19:50

Is Nina Simone singing My Baby Just Cares for Me? Because this takes me back to a lot of the records we used to play when I was in those pre-university years, about to hit the real world, sneaking off to party with my sister and my friend Jan. And

Margaret Busby20:11

Niosimon was one of those people

Margaret Busby20:14

that we played time and time again on our L P s and I just continued loving this song and it's still something that I love and I'm I'm happy to dance to it still. So let's hear Nina Simone playing My Baby Just Cares for Me.

Margaret Busby20:30

Mommy Middle Cancer show

Margaret Busby20:35

Mamby Bill

Margaret Busby20:37

Hello?

Margaret Busby20:40

My brain just cares for me

Margaret Busby20:47

My baby we don't care for

Margaret Busby20:51

Cars and races

Margaret Busby20:55

One breathing care for

Margaret Busby21:04

It's not a style high.

Margaret Busby21:08

And even Lana turns my head

Margaret Busby21:13

Something he can't see.

Margaret Busby21:19

My baby don't care.

Speaker 121:21

Uh

Margaret Busby21:21

Uh

Speaker 121:25

What was this?

Speaker 121:27

My baby's cat

Presenter21:32

Nina Simone and My Baby Just Cares For Me. Now, Margaret Bosby, I cannot let you take Nina Simone to the island without you telling us about getting to know her,'cause I've seen photographic evidence of the two of you hanging out.

Margaret Busby21:44

We were both in Trinidad, I think, for carnival. I can't remember what year it was, and we came back to London on the same

Margaret Busby21:51

plane because she had to do some

Margaret Busby21:54

Television interview

Margaret Busby21:56

And we

Margaret Busby21:57

Had a meal or two together with her agent and other people, and and she was also singing at Monnie Scott's, and I heard her

Margaret Busby22:04

Singing at Monnie Scotts Jazz Club.

Margaret Busby22:08

She was at that time, I think, trying to get her autobiography

Margaret Busby22:12

Britain and she wanted help from people in different ways. So it was in in that era and and we

Presenter22:18

We vaguely kept in touch. Margaret Busby were the co founder of the publisher Allison and Busby in nineteen sixty seven at just twenty three, the youngest person to found their own publishing house and the UK's first black female publisher, too. How did the business actually get started?

Margaret Busby22:35

Alison and Busby. Started

Margaret Busby22:38

From the meeting of Clive Allison and Margaret Wesby.

Margaret Busby22:42

before we were even graduates. And my friend Rachel Anderson was about to marry a friend of his and they were having a party to celebrate this and we were talking about what we were doing at our respective universities, writing poetry, publishing poetry, editing college magazines. And the question was, what are you going to do when you graduate? I thought I might go into publishing. I thought I might go into publishing. Let's start a publishing house.

Margaret Busby23:10

And so we met up after graduating and we decided to start by publishing poetry, which we were both

Margaret Busby23:20

interested in and we

Margaret Busby23:24

Found a way to get these books typeset cheaply on Electric Typewriter. We we produced them. So they were five shillings each, I think. They were five Bob each. We didn't know how many copies to print. We printed five thousand copies each and we had fifteen thousand five bob poetry books because we wanted to make poetry books that's cheap enough for young people like us to afford. We had no way of distributing them apart from stopping people in the street or knocking on doors.

Margaret Busby23:52

Until we actually eventually got some help from Andre Deutsche Publisher, who

Margaret Busby23:57

helped to distribute our books. Well, we started from the point of knowing nothing about the industry, how many copies you printed, what you did with them when you printed them. So you didn't know the conventions. We could break the rules. We know the conventions, we break the rules, we could just do what we believed in.

Presenter24:07

And see if I could break all of the convent.

Margaret Busby24:12

And we went on from there. And you have authors you believe in? I was working closely with a lot of different authors, whether there were

Margaret Busby24:21

People like Sam Greene, the first writer we published, or Buccia Mosheta, another writer who I worked closely with, or Roy Heath, a Ghanaian writer, as well as writers who were not black, like Michael Moorcock. And it was a really eclectic list. When I saw that C. L. R. James, my father's friend, who I knew was an important writer, was not in print mostly in Britain.

Margaret Busby24:46

We started republishing C. L. R. James. We started with three volumes of selected writings. We published Black Jacobins, his his famous book, which has had gone out of print. That was the sort of thing that was made it worthwhile. We could do things because we believed in them that other people were not doing because they either didn't know or they

Presenter25:06

They had different perspectives on the world. Yes, and that fed into this reputation for being adventurous and unconventional. I mean, like many listeners, I I grew up reading the fantastically successful Worst Witch series by Jill Murphy.

Margaret Busby25:18

Oh, Jill, yeah, that was a wonderful book. At the first we started with The Worst Witch and and she went on to publish The Worst Strike Stripes again and other books. So there were people who came to us because they knew who we were. Maverick

Presenter25:31

Bricks, if you like.

Margaret Busby25:31

Uh

Presenter25:31

Uh Margaret, I could talk about the books all day, but we've got to make room for the music too, so it's time for your sixth choice today. Tell us about this one. Why are you taking it with you?

Margaret Busby25:40

Masanga by Jean-Bosco Mwender, a Congolese guitarist. And this was actually given to me as a 78, as a wedding present in the 60s. And I was mesmerised by it. It's just so intricate. I never tire of hearing it. And I was delighted to find another recording of the tune by John Williams, the guitarist, who became a friend because I published his father, actually. I published a couple of books by John Williams' father, Len Williams. But Mastanga is a brilliant guitar performance, if you like, and I recommend it to anybody. Wants to just listen to some wonderful music.

Speaker 126:42

When the man be a total you lay up by a game When the Uman BM when you singo ya

Presenter26:49

Jean Boscombe Wender and Ms. Sanger.

Presenter26:52

Margaret Busby, part of your very significant contribution to the publishing world has been two monumental anthologies. Daughters of Africa came out in 1992 and New Daughters of Africa followed in 2019. In the introduction to the latter, you ask us to feast on its banquet of words and there really is so much to enjoy. 800 pages embracing authors everywhere from Antigua to Zanzibar and from the present day back to West African poetry of the 1700s and the writing of abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond. How on earth did you set about deciding what to include?

Presenter27:30

Yeah.

Margaret Busby27:30

Well, the f the first volume, Daughters of Africa, that that was in fact was easier, because I just went to my bookshelves and my boxes and piles of newspapers and magazines and books and selected what I wanted, and that was how it happened. It's just amazing how many wonderful writers haven't had enough attention, haven't had the spotlight shone on them. Not to say that those who have are are not worthy of it. This volume contains writers who are well known.

Margaret Busby27:59

as well as writers who are not well known. So you may have all the writers you already know who are roughly descent, whether you're talking about Timander or Zadie Smith or names that you've heard of, but there are so many other writers who deserve attention. And I could do another volume tomorrow of all the people I left out or who didn't get back to me in time or who I

Presenter28:21

I've just learned about. It's time to hear your next disc, Margaret. Number seven already. What's next?

Margaret Busby28:27

There are so many wonderful songs by Miriam McCabell that I've listened to over the decades.

Margaret Busby28:34

Her former husband, Hugh Matakela, wrote Soweto Blues for Miramake. I was certainly there in the early days of Nelson Mandela being president. And this is something that reminds me both of how far we've come as well as of all the contributions that women have made to music and to the arts, including literature.

Margaret Busby29:11

Refusing to comply, they sent an answer. That's when the policeman came to the rescue.

Margaret Busby29:22

Run we're flying.

Margaret Busby29:24

Bullets dying, all the mothers screaming at

Presenter29:30

Miriam McCaber and Soweto Blues. Margaret Busby, you've been a pioneer in your field. You've been involved in a number of initiatives looking at the diversity of the publishing industry, both in who's published but also who is working within the industry. Have you seen enough change during your lifetime?

Margaret Busby29:48

I think there is so much change that needs to be done still. Of course there has been change, and I think it's important that you get different people choosing the stories, because you get different people consuming the stories as well. It's not that I only read books by black women.

Margaret Busby30:07

I read books by all sorts of people, and it's not that people who write only write about themselves. I think you have to just look at it in terms of why would you only eat spinach if you can also eat chocolate?

Margaret Busby30:23

Yeah.

Presenter30:23

And they're both good for you. Yeah, in completely different ways. Margaret, it's almost time to cast you away. How good are you with solitude, I wonder?

Presenter30:31

I don't mind being on my own.

Presenter30:34

Yeah.

Margaret Busby30:34

I can spend a lot of time in my own head.

Margaret Busby30:37

But I love being with other people. I miss my friends. I m I miss all the people I haven't seen.

Margaret Busby30:44

Since lockdown began.

Margaret Busby30:46

I will certainly

Margaret Busby30:48

miss not being able to have a little dance with my partner Luke, not being able to phone up friends, not being able to do all the social things that are that make life w worth living.

Presenter31:03

One more tune before you go then, Margaret. This is your final choice to day. What is it? Just to reflect.

Margaret Busby31:08

Something about my

Presenter31:10

Yeah.

Margaret Busby31:10

Love of jazz and my love of dancing. I mean I'm a trustee of a wonderful organisation which is now 30 years old this year called Tomorrow's Warriors which is a charity which tries to give musical educational opportunities to young people who wouldn't otherwise have that opportunity. So that feeling of connecting with jazz is to me is something joyous and I'd like to capture that in a track that I often listen to from an album called Sunny Side Up which features performances by Dizard Gillespie, Sully Rollins and Sunny Stit. And it's on the sunny side of the street.

Presenter32:49

On the Sunny Side of the Street, performed by Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt, and a track that you like to cut a rug to in your daily life, Mark.

Margaret Busby32:58

Yeah, well I I was dancing to that just the other day with my partner Luke and we miss our Friday night dances that we used to go to in a local get together.

Margaret Busby33:11

But, you know, we have two people parties and this is a good track for that.

Presenter33:17

Well, it'll be a solo party on the island, but definitely a good one to have with you. So, Margaret Busby, it's time to cast you away. I'm going to give you three books, the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Of course, you can also have a book of your choosing.

Margaret Busby33:19

Definitely a good guy.

Presenter33:31

What will it be?

Margaret Busby33:32

Yeah.

Presenter33:32

What a

Margaret Busby33:32

I'm in a half.

Margaret Busby33:34

Is an actual copy of a book that my father was given.

Margaret Busby33:39

by CLR James. In fact, it's inscribed for George.

Margaret Busby33:44

from Nello, which was CLR's nickname.

Margaret Busby33:48

And it's a copy of Return to My Native Land by Aimé Césaire. There are various wonderful bits that Césaire wrote in that, one of which formed the basis of a volume of selected writings by C. L. R. James as I published called At the Rendezvous of Victory. And that is from a saying that says, No race holds a monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of strength, and there's a place for all at the rendezvous of victory. So that to me gives hope that we're all going to get together and have a good time in the end.

Presenter34:24

It's yours to take with you. Of course, you can also have a luxury item, something to make your time on the island more enjoyable. What would you like?

Presenter34:31

I'd like an endless supp Clapping.

Margaret Busby34:33

Yeah.

Presenter34:33

Yeah.

Margaret Busby34:33

Chocolate, not just any chocolate, made in Ghana chocolate, okay?

Presenter34:38

Why Garnet and chocolate in particular? Is that just patriotic or is it? The best chocolate in the world. Okay.

Margaret Busby34:40

So that's a patriotic or is it a

Presenter34:44

Just checking. An endless supply is yours. I wouldn't deny that.

Margaret Busby34:47

Wouldn't deny it.

Presenter34:48

Finally, and perhaps this is the most difficult, which of these disks would you save above the others, if you're forced to choose?

Margaret Busby34:55

Stevie Wonders Visions,'Cause that reminds me of so many good times, as well as sad times. I think of the fact that my sister died the day before George Floyd died, and Stevie sent her this track.

Presenter35:11

Margaret Busby, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you. My pleasure.

Presenter35:30

Hi, I really hope you enjoyed that interview with the publisher and editor Margaret Busby. We've cast away many publishers to the Desert Island, including Carmel Khalil, Kay Webb, and Victor Galance. You can find their episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be the fashion designer Paul Costello. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 436:05

Hi, I'm Matthew Side and I'd like to invite you to see the world differently with my podcast, Sideways. Those societies and social networks begin to act as a brain, a collective brain unto itself. Sideways is all about the ideas that shape our lives. And in this series, I'll get to grips with the myth of mind control. This is your subliminal programming tape on smoking control. He's what I would consider to be a quack charlatan. And I'll find out why it's so hard to be original.

Speaker 436:40

For all this and more, subscribe to Sideways on BBC Sounds.