Margaret Allnutt Bax (née Priestley) was born in 1920 and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, before serving in the Department of Naval Operational Research and then in the Naval Intelligence Division from 1942 until 1945. Following the war she took a B.Litt. at St Hugh's College, Oxford, taught at the Universities of Leeds, Manchester and Cambridge and was then a lecturer at the University of Ghana from 1952 until 1963. She married Neil Bax in 1962 but retained Priestley as her professional name. Between 1966 and 1973 she was visiting associate professor of history at the University of Alberta, Canada, and Northwestern University, USA, and was a research fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. During the 1970s she was a consultant, with Neil Bax, to the Commonwealth Secretariat and a visiting professor at the University of Ghana. Between 1981 and 1986 she undertook research assignments for the Government of Jamaica.

Neil Bax was born in 1925 and educated at Dover County Grammar School for Boys which was evacuated to Ebbw Vale in May 1940. He served in the Home Guard (Monmouthshire Regiment) from 1941 to 1943 before enlisting as a Territorial in the Indian Army, serving in India, Malaya and Singapore. From 1947 to 1950 he studied economics at the London School of Economics and then joined the Gold Coast Civil Service as an assistant auditor. Following Independence he remained in the Ghana Civil Service, reaching the post of Deputy Auditor-General, and retired in 1962. Bax was subsequently involved in training and consultancy work, initially for the Department for Technical Co-operation and its successors and later for the European Economic Community and Government of Jamaica. He retired in 1986.