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- An English author from Kirkdale, Liverpool, Brian Jacques is best known for his Redwall saga of fantasy books, as well as the Castaways of the Flying Dutchman series. He has also written two collections of short stories, The Ribbajack and Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales. As a youth, Jacques attended St. Johns Elementary School, an inner city Catholic school that had its playground on the roof. It was at this school where he was an altarboy. While enrolled there, an experience at the age of ten marked his potential as a writer. After being assigned to write an essay about the unusual characteristics of animals, Jacques wrote about a bird that cleaned the teeth of a crocodile. The teacher refused to believe that a boy his age could write as well as he did. When young Brian refused to falsely say that he had copied the story, he was caned for lying. He had always loved to write, but it was only then that he realized that he had a talent for it. Jacques' ancestry is French on the paternal side, and Irish on the maternal side; Jacques' grandmother came to Liverpool from Cork Country, Ireland, in 1895. It was also at St. Johns that Brian met his English teacher, Alan Durband (who also taught two Beatles, Paul McCartney and George Harrison), who would bring about a major change in his life over 30 years later. Durband co-founded Liverpool's Everyman Theatre, where Brian was later resident playwright, with Terry Hands in 1964. As a boy, authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stephenson served as writers Jacques enjoyed, as well as books such as The Iliad, The Odyssey, King Solomon's Mines, The Lost World, Scaramouche, and Treasure Island. As an adult, Jacques has mentioned P. G. Wodehouse and Damon Runyon as favorites. After Brian dropped out of school at the age of 15, he set out to find adventure as a Merchant Marine A.B. (Able Seaman). He traveled to many ports, including New York, Valparaiso, San Francisco, and Yokohama. Tiring of the lonely life of a sailor, he returned to his home town of 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. For a while, Jacques wrote a column for the Catholic Pictorial in Liverpool. During the 1960s, Jacques was involved with a local Liverpudlian folk singing group. Calling themselves "The Liverpool Fishermen", this act made rounds at local pubs and clubs, and released an LP called Swallow the Anchor in 1971. The group was composed of Jacques, as well as some friends and family members. Jacques also provided backing for Liverpool trio The Scaffold, and has a lifetime membership to well-known Beatles stomping grounds, the Cavern Club. In the mid-1970s, Jacques also ran a weekly folk club on Bold St. in Liverpool, where he often performed monologues and allowed musicians to perform. Prior to Redwall, Jacques wrote various books of humorous poetry and short stories under the names "J. B. Jaques" and "J. Brian Jaques." These books were published almost exclusively by Anvil Press in Liverpool. The first one, Get Yer Wack: A Liverpool Anthology, was released in 1971. Over the coming years Jacques authored 4 more of these books, Yennoworrameanlike, A Mersey Bible, Scouse with the Lid Off, and finally Jakestown in 1979. In the Everyman Theatre's 18th season (1981-1982), Jacques was the resident playwright. His stage play Brown Bitter, Wet Nellies, and Scouse was performed there, where he was also an actor for a brief stint of time. Redwall was originally written on 800 sheets of recycled paper kept in a Safeway grocery bag for children attending the Royal School for the Blind in Wavertree, Liverpool when Jacques was a truck driver in the mid-1980s. The tale was inspired by Kirkdale's Stanley Park. Later, Alan Durband sent the book to publishers without telling Jacques, which led to a contract for the first five books of Redwall. Jacques only received around $4000 for that novel. The 22nd and final known novel, The Rogue Crew, was published in May 2011. For many years, Jacques worked on Redwall books with close friend Patricia Lee Gauch, former Vice President and editor at Philomel Books, who first came to the company in 1985. She stepped down from Philomel in September 2009. Redwall was first read in the U.S. by Putnam editor Arthur Levine, who took the novel to the Philomel offices.
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