Bruce Clark: Contributing Narrator to the Joyful Pilgrimage audiobook
The creation of the audiobook edition of Joyful Pilgrimage: In the wake of St Columba (Continued from Joyful Pilgrimage Audiobook)
Bruce Clark
Creation of the audiobook version of Joyful Pilgrimage: In the wake of St Columba (continued from the audiobook page)
The book, Joyful Pilgrimage, included an Introduction about St Columba, written by Canon Stephen Cave, a curragh crew member, and an appendix about the curragh, written by the curragh skipper, Wallace Clark. Both had passed away.
Billy Patterson and Jonathan Barry both suggested I ask Bruce Clark, the curragh skipper Wallace Clark’s son, who now lives near London. Bruce, I discovered, is a retired journalist, author, commentator, lecturer and broadcaster on international affairs, religion, and history. He had been the International Security Editor of The Economist and a former correspondent for Reuters, The Times, and the Financial Times.
Bruce Clark speaking about religous tourism in 2022
Bruce sounded most interesting, but there was nothing about boats in his C.V. Billy wrote to him introducing the project and me and then we had a lengthy video chat. No lilting Irish brogue this time, he’d been away from Ireland far too long, his speech now a calm studious international English.
But yes, he’d be delighted to help with the audiobook, but maybe not with his father’s piece about the curragh. Clearly that wasn’t an interest he’d inherited. But perhaps the introduction to St Columba at the beginning of the book? “Ah yes, now that’s something I’d like to help with. There’s been quite a bit of research on Columba since 1963 when Stephen Cave wrote that. I’d be happy to read his piece, but I’d also like to bring it up to date with the current research and thinking about Columba, if you’d be agreeable.”
Agreeable? First, we’d secured Billy Patterson to read the chapters with ‘a ‘few edits to get the story right’, then the author’s son to read a piece reflecting on his father, and now the skipper’s son, an internationally recognised religious historian, was offering to update and read the introduction to Columba! It seemed like the divine providence that John Barry writes about to explain the frequent good fortune that befell the curragh venture, was continuing.
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