Nigerian entrepreneur Mo Abudu made headlines this week after officially opening EbonyLife Place London — a new cultural hub dedicated to Black arts and culture in Nine Elms, South West London.
The multi-story venue features a 160-seat cinema that organizers said will exclusively programme Black films from across the African diaspora. Abudu has described the venue as the UK’s first “Black cinema.” It is not. Electric Cinema in Notting Hill was owned and operated, from 1993 to 2000, by Kwesi Owusu, Paul Bucknor and Mark Mantock, three Black filmmakers of African and West Indian heritage. The space was a popular hub for global independent Black cinema.
Nonetheless, EbonyLife Place London is a welcome addition to the UK cinema space, which is impossible to imagine without decades of important work on Black filmmaking in the UK, like Stephen Bourne’s essential book Black in the British Frame.
First published in 1998 and updated in 2001, Black in the British Frame was one of the first mainstream books to document the historical experiences, representations, and contributions of people of African and Caribbean descent in British cinema and television. The book covers an enormous chunk of British screen history (1896 to 2001), with each chapter uncovering and illuminating the careers of early Black screen pioneers. Figures profiled in Bourne’s book include Ernest Trimingham, a previously “lost” Black pioneer of the British silent film era; African American actor Paul Robeson, who spent much of the 1930s working in the UK, where he enjoyed top billing; and the Guyanese-born screen and stage legend Carmen Munroe.
Black in the British Frame has been one of the foundations of British screen scholarship since its publication. You can find the book on most school reading lists. But it is now almost impossible to find new or old copies.
Bourne tells Deadline in a lengthy interview from his South London home that the book is out of print. Bloomsbury Publishing, which assumed control of the book after merging with Bourne’s previous publisher, returned the rights to the author.
“I resisted because I wanted them to reissue the book, but they refused,” Bourne said. “It was a horrible experience. The book now sits with me.”
Bloomsbury confirmed the book’s rights were reverted to Bourne in a short statement. He is now looking for a new publisher.
Bourne has been writing Black British history books for more than 30 years. Alongside Black in the British Frame, he is best known for Black Poppies: Britain’s Black Community and the Great War (2014), Playing Gay in the Golden Age of British Television (2019), and Deep Are the Roots – Trailblazers Who Changed Black British Theatre (2021).
In 2017, Bourne received an honorary Screen Nation Award (often referred to as the “Black BAFTAs”) for his decades-long work documenting Black British film, television, and social history. Earlier this year, he published a memoir, Thursday’s Child: A Life Between the Lines, via Jacaranda.
Below, Bourne explains how and why Black in the British Frame fell out of print. The author makes the case for why it is important that the book finds a new home.
“The book isn’t about me. It’s about the people in it. If people can’t access it, we’re living in a very sad world,” Bourne said.
DEADLINE: Stephen, what is the story? How did we get here with Black in the British Frame out of print?
STEPHEN BOURNE: Black in the British Frame was published in 1998 by Cassell, and it made quite an impact. That was a watershed year for Black British history books. Trevor Phillips and Mike Phillips published their Windrush book; Sam King published his autobiography, Climbing Up the Rough Side of the Mountain; and Jeffrey Green published Black Edwardians. It was also the fiftieth anniversary of Windrush, so Black British history and culture received a great deal of media attention.
The book did well, and universities picked it up for reading lists. I received excellent feedback from students and the general public. It didn’t receive as much mainstream recognition as I had hoped, but it found its readers and sold quickly. One reason it sold so well was a young Black woman in Cassell’s press office. We got on well, and she told me everyone else in the office was white, middle-class, and didn’t know how to market the book. She printed hundreds of small flyers, which I distributed to bookshops, on trains, and on buses. That’s how you sell a Black British history book—and it worked.
Cassell was then taken over by the publisher Continuum. A new editor asked me, only three years later, to revise and update the book to 2001. I did so, and the new edition came out with a slightly amended subtitle. Once again, it was picked up by the general public and university reading lists. Students responded positively and used it in their work. Eventually, Bloomsbury took over the Continuum catalogue. I approached them because I wanted the book kept in print. They said they would only do that if I updated it. This was about four or five years ago. I thought about it carefully, but after 2001 the filmmaking landscape had changed dramatically through video and digital media. Updating the book would have required an enormous amount of research, and I felt it would dilute the original book, which covered the period from the 1890s to the 1990s.
Bloomsbury would not accept that. They said they would revert the rights to me. I resisted because I wanted them to reissue the book, but they refused. It was a horrible experience. The book now sits with me. I’ve approached a couple of academic presses. They either turned it down or said, “Update it.” I don’t want to update it.
DEADLINE: I’m surprised. This is one of the most important books in the history of British cinema. Is this common?
BOURNE: I don’t know whether it’s common. I’ve never been able to get an agent. Agents have always turned me down. They’re very white and middle class, and they’re not interested in Black history. Some have practically told me that. Early on, I was told, “There’s no market for Black British books in this country.”
I practically begged Bloomsbury to let me come in and meet them, but publishing houses don’t work that way anymore. I know what you’re saying is true because so many Black people have told me how much the book meant to them. There are very few second-hand copies available online. It has been allowed to slip away. It shows how uninterested the film world, Bloomsbury’s film list, and the wider industry are. Bloomsbury did this to five of my books, four of them about Black cinema.
DEADLINE: Do you think this is a distinctly British problem? I struggle to imagine this happening in the United States with an important book about African American cinema.
BOURNE: My impression is that African Americans are more united. If something happened to a classic African American film history book by someone like Donald Bogle, there would be an uproar. We don’t think like that in this country. The BBC, the BFI, the London Film Festival, and the publishing world have always been dominated by the white middle class. They make occasional moves towards including a token Black person, but that’s not the same as genuine change.
DEADLINE: I’ve always thought Black In The British Frame was so popular because it was so accessible. I first read it when I was pretty young and trying to understand my own relationship to cinema as a Black person in Britain.
BOURNE: That was my intention. I’m not an academic or theoretical writer, so the book is free of academic jargon and theory. I also didn’t want to write only about racism. There is colonialism and racism in some of the early British films featuring Black actors, and I didn’t shy away from that, but I wanted the book to be celebratory too. I wanted to convey the work of the older generation of Black actors I was fortunate enough to interview and how proud they were. When I began interviewing actors such as Carmen Munroe and Norman Beaton in the 1980s, I realized that they had not simply played prostitutes or pimps. They had also done quality work, and that work was never recognized.
Books like mine try to give a balanced account and respect the older generation that did important work. Paul Robeson’s films from the 1930s are sometimes problematic and can pander to colonial ideas about Black people. Sanders of the River is an obvious example. But Robeson consciously moved away from that, and by his sixth and final British film, The Proud Valley, he had largely achieved what he set out to do. The Proud Valley is a wonderful film about working-class people in a Welsh mining village. Robeson integrates into that community, which was astounding for a British film in 1940. Hollywood would never have given Robeson that respect, but British cinema did. He was enormously popular with British audiences and appeared among the top ten box-office stars alongside Will Hay, George Formby, Gracie Fields, and Jessie Matthews.
That’s why Robeson’s photograph appears on the covers of both the first and second editions of Black in the British Frame. He remains almost a one-off in British film, despite the shortcomings of some of his films. All of that is in the book, along with interviews with Earl Cameron and Carmen Munroe. The book isn’t about me. It’s about the people in it. If people can’t access it, we’re living in a very sad world. I have to put the responsibility for that on Bloomsbury. And with the Black consciousness that exists now, particularly among young people, I think the book would be snapped up if it were reprinted and repackaged with a new cover.
DEADLINE: You have the rights now, and you’d be open to a reprint. If people see this and are interested, should they contact you?
BOURNE: Yes, but I don’t want to hand it over to just anyone. I’d want a bona fide publisher. I’m open to offers and suggestions.
DEADLINE: Where should people contact you?
BOURNE: Through my website’s contact page. I don’t have an agent. Some people try contacting my publishers, who sometimes forward messages, but I’d rather people go through my website.