British author Brian Jacques died 5 February 2011 of a heart attack while undergoing treatment for an aortic aneurysm. Born in Liverpool, England, on 15 June 1939, he will be remembered for his 21-book Redwall series. The series, set in an abbey populated by animals, was first written for children at the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind in Liverpool.
Jacques, according to his web site, “grew up in the area around the Liverpool docks, where he attended St. John’s School, an inner city school featuring a playground on its roof. At the age of ten, his very first day at St. John’s foreshadowed his future career as an author; given an assignment to write a story about animals, he wrote a short story about a bird who cleaned a crocodile’s teeth. Brian’s teacher could not, and would not believe that a ten year old could write so well. When young Brian refused to falsely say that he had copied the story, he was caned as ‘a liar’. He had always loved to write, but it was only then that he realized he had a talent for it.”
“After Brian finished school at fifteen, he set out to find adventure as a merchant seaman. He travelled to many far away ports, including New York, Valparaiso, San Francisco, and Yokohama. Tiring of the lonely life of a sailor, he returned to Liverpool where he worked as a railway fireman, a longshoreman, a long-distance truck driver, a bus driver, a boxer, a bobby (Police Constable 216D), a postmaster, and a stand-up comic.”
In the 1960s, with his brothers, he formed a folksinging group called The Liverpool Fishermen, but the group broke up when his brothers moved to New Zealand. His writing career began in earnest as a playwright. His three stage plays—Brown Bitter, Wet Nellies, and Scouse—have been performed at the Everyman Theatre.
Jacques wrote Redwall for the children at the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind in Liverpool, where as a truck driver, he delivered milk. Because of the nature of his first audience, he made his style of writing as descriptive as possible, painting pictures with words so that the schoolchildren could see them in their imaginations. He remained a patron of the school until his death.
He found wider audiences when his childhood English teacher, Alan Durband, read Redwall, and showed it to a publisher without telling him. This event led to a contract for the first five books in the Redwall series, and a dedication to Alan in the front of several Redwall books.
He is survived by his wife, two grown sons, and two grandchildren.