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Sarah Swinburne White was an anti-racism activist and co-founder of New Beacon Books, Britain’s first specialist black bookshop and publishing company.

'''Life and Career ''' White was born in Welwyn, Hertfordshire on 5th April 1941 to mother Dorothy (nee Swinburne) and father Eric Walter White and raised in Hampstead, North London where Dorothy (known as Dodo) was active in the Liberal party. White's father 'was the Arts Council’s first literature director, as well as being a translator, editor, poet and author'.

Co-founder with John La Rose in 1966 of New Beacon Books, the UK’s first black bookshop and publishing company, White was also a founder member of the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books in the early 1980s, and a trustee and secretary, from 1991 onwards, of the George Padmore Institute, a home for documents relating to the black presence in Britain.

In 2013 Sarah was the co-recipient of the first Bocas Henry Swanzy award from the Bocas Literary Festival in Trinidad and Tobago.

Died aged 80 on 4th February 2022.

Publications

White co-edited several publications for the George Padmore Institute and for New Beacon Books, including, with Roxy Harris and Sharmilla Beezmohun, A Meeting of the Continents (2005), documenting the history of the book fairs.  

References