Busby and Page recognised in Queen's birthday honours list

Publisher Margaret Busby and Faber executive chair Stephen Page are among some of the publishing names recognised in this year’s Queen’s birthday honours list.

Writers Dr Philippa Gregory, Lemn Sissay, Lauren Child, Edmund de Waal and David Almond are also among those named on the list.

Busby has been awarded a CBE for services to publishing. She is the co-founder of the publishing company Allison & Busby and was Britain’s youngest and first Black woman publisher when she co-founded the press in the late 1960s. She has published authors including Buchi Emecheta, Nuruddin Farah, Rosa Guy, C L R James, Michael Moorcock and Jill Murphy.

She also works as a writer, editor, broadcaster and literary critic, and has written drama for BBC radio and the stage. Last month it was announced she is to receive this year’s London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award.

Page received an OBE for services to publishing. He began his career in bookselling before moving into publishing to work in marketing in sales, joining Fourth Estate in 1994 before becoming managing director in 2000. In 2001 he moved to Faber as chief executive and recently became executive chair at the publisher. He has been a trustee of the Rathbones Folio Prize since its inception in 2013 and is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

He said he was "delighted by the award", adding: "I’ve been so fortunate to spend my career serving reading and writers, and our wider culture, about which I care deeply, and done so with so many brilliant colleagues. I have found it to also be a moment to reflect on the challenges we face at present, with so much change in the world, and the need for our important, culturally-based industry to continue to sustain and adapt the environment that has allowed us to thrive over the last decade. There is much to do to ensure that, and I’ll look forward to continuing to do whatever is required to support colleagues as we adapt to an exciting future.”

Gregory has also been awarded a CBE for services to literature and charity in the UK and The Gambia. She is best known for writing The Other Boleyn Girl (HarperCollins) and The White Queen (Simon & Schuster) and also founded a charity, Gardens of The Gambia, in 1993 to provide water for wells in the gardens of rural schools. The charity and NGO was closed in December last year.

Poet and playwright Sissay has been awarded an OBE for services to literacy and charity. Sissay was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics and has been chancellor of the University of Manchester since 2015. He posted a 'blog of thanks' this weekend after the award was announced. In it, he thanked friends, publishers, agents, musicians, charitable trusts and his family, while in a separate statement he urged other children who grew up in care like he did to "reach for the stars".

In children's books, author and illustrator Child, known for the Charlie and Lola books (Orchard), and the Waterstones Childrens Laureate from 2017-19, has been awarded a CBE for services to children’s literature, while author David Almond has been awarded an OBE for services to literature. Almond has previously won the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award, and is best known for his debut work Skellig (Hodder).

Writer and potter Edmund de Waal received a CBE for services to the arts, while author Patrice Lawrence received an MBE for services to literature.

Honours also go to Irenosen Okojie, who has been awarded an MBE for services to literature. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish (Jacaranda Books) won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Edinburgh First Book Award.

Claire Malcolm receives an MBE for services to literature, young people and the north-east of England. She is the founder of the charity New Writing North, which supports writing and reading in the north of England.

Author Kevin Maxwell has also been awarded an MBE for services to diversity through literature for his book Forced Out (Granta), a memoir providing an insider perspective of day-to-day life in the police force.

Librarian Eleanor McKay also received an MBE for services to local studies and the community in Argyll and Bute while there was an MBE for Way with Words director Kay Dunbar.

However, over the weekend, writer Nikesh Shukla announced on Twitter that he turned down the award. He tweeted: "Last month I turned down an MBE. The main reason for not accepting the MBE was because I hate how it valorises the British Empire, a brutal, bloody thing that resulted in so much death and destruction. To accept the MBE would be to co-sign it."