Eric Huntley, co-founder of Bogle L’Ouverture, dies aged 96

Eric Huntley, who co-founded the radical London publishing house Bogle L’Ouverture with his wife Jessica in 1968, has died aged 96. Started on a printing press in the couple’s west London living room, the venture grew into the Bogle L’Ouverture bookshop in 1975, which became a community hub and informal advice centre as well as a place to buy books outside the mainstream.

The press and shop championed writers including Linton Kwesi Johnson, Valerie Bloom, Lemn Sissay, Beryl Gilroy and Donald Hinds, and the Huntleys helped create the International Book Fair of Radical and Third World Books, which ran from 1982 to 1995. Born in Georgetown in British Guiana (now Guyana), Huntley was one of 12 children of Frank, a prison warder, and Selina.

He worked for the post office, trained briefly as a Methodist preacher, and married Jessica Carroll in 1950. He became active in the movement that formed the People’s Progressive Party; after the party’s victory the British government declared a state of emergency, and in 1954 Huntley was arrested for breaking a curfew and spent a year in prison, an episode he later said inflicted "mental torture" on him and his father.

He moved to Britain in 1957 and was joined by his family in 1962. The press was set up in 1968 to distribute the speeches of the Guyanese activist Walter Rodney; its first title, Rodney’s The Groundings With My Brothers, appeared in 1969.

Key Topics

Culture, Eric Huntley, Bogle L’ouverture, Walter Rodney, International Book Fair, Georgetown