Catherine Barr was born in Edinburgh in 1951, first child of the eminent biblical scholar James Barr and the classical researcher and teacher Jane Barr. She had a peripatetic childhood as the family moved with the developing international career of her father. Her early years were spent in Tiberias in Israel where James Barr was the pastor of the Presbyterian church, followed by time in Montreal in Canada as he moved into his first academic post. Her early education took place when the family was back in Edinburgh. At the start of the 1960s the family moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where they lived in a large home on the campus of the Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1965 they moved back to the UK, living first in a remote country house high in the hills of Derbyshire, and then in Bramhall, a suburb of Manchester, while James Barr was Professor of Semitic Languages at the University of Manchester. Catherine’s education in these years was at Manchester High School for Girls. Her innate sense of independence clashed with the hierarchical values she encountered there, and Catherine rather relished her role as a rebel and a critic of the school’s traditionalism and conservatism. She then went to the University of Nottingham to study French and linguistics, a period which included time spent in Paris and which laid foundations for a lifelong enjoyment of French life and culture.

After university, Catherine took a secretarial course which she hated, and made an initial venture into secretarial work which she found equally unappealing. But she discovered that the skills she had acquired were extremely useful in developing a career in editorial work, and she soon found her metier in publishing. She joined the independent British reference publisher Europa, where she rose to become the joint editor of their flagship publication, the Europa Year Book. Based in Bedford Square in the heart of London’s Bloomsbury, Europa was a congenial environment in which she could deploy her excellence as an editor in a friendly workplace with stimulating colleagues. While working at Europa Catherine met her life partner Dave Bogart, a journalist, editor and musician who was working at the TV Times, a magazine based around the corner from the Europa offices. When Dave decided to go back to the US, Catherine moved with him, living first in New Jersey (at Raven Rock and then in Milford), and subsequently relocating with Dave to Gilbertsville in upstate New York where they found a community in which they felt at home. Catherine continued for some years to work as an employee in publishing companies, mainly major US reference publishers such as Bowker and ABC-Clio, but also for a period as an employee of the Journal of Commerce, commuting to New York from New Jersey and working in the World Trade Center prior to 9/11. However she often found the management of such companies to be unimpressive, and she and Dave ultimately decided to go independent, forming a joint publishing consultancy and providing services to publishing companies on a freelance basis which gave them much greater freedom and control over their own time and decisions. One of the many benefits of their independence was the opportunity to spend more time in France, where they acquired a small house on the ramparts of the town of Montreuil-sur-Mer in the north of France, previously owned by her brother Stephen. Catherine and Dave relished their time in France and built close friendships with members of the community there. It was in France, however, that they encountered calamity when Dave experienced a burst aortic aneurysm. For a period it seemed as though he might survive and recover, but over time his condition deteriorated, and shortly after returning to the U.S., Dave died. Catherine returned to Gilbertsville and continued to work and live in the community there, but the loss of her partner had affected her deeply and she never fully recovered a sense of belonging. She started to think about returning to the UK and at one point made a step in that direction, purchasing a house in Shavington near Crewe, around fifty miles from where she had earlier lived in the Manchester area. But ultimately she decided to remain in Gilbertsville where she had a lovely home and supportive friends and neighbours. Her final years were marked by increasingly serious health problems which over time limited her mobility and her capacity to continue both her work and her social life. She died on 3 rd September 2022.

Catherine’s family and friends recall fondly her keen intelligence, dry wit, and love of good company. Though she left her native Scotland at the age of ten, throughout her life she remained proud of her Scottish heritage and nourished a warm affection for her far-flung aunts, uncles and cousins, while also appreciating the freedom, kindness and generosity that she found in America.

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