Brian Jacques, Writer of Redwall Series, Dies at 71
By MARGALIT FOX
He was a longshoreman and a long-haul trucker; a merchant mariner and a railway fireman; a boxer, a bus driver and a British bobby. But it wasn’t until he became a milkman that Brian Jacques found his métier.
Nearing midlife, Mr. Jacques (pronounced “Jakes”) took a job driving a milk truck in Liverpool, where he was born and lived to the end of his life. On his route was the Royal School for the Blind.
Invited in for a nice cup of tea one day, he volunteered to read to the students. Over time, he grew dissatisfied with the books available — too much adolescent angst, he later said — and vowed to write his own.
He wrote what he called “a proper story,” brimming with battle and gallantry. Titled “Redwall” and published in 1986, it became the first installment in what is now a best-selling 21-volume children’s fantasy series.
Mr. Jacques died on Saturday in Liverpool, at 71. The death was announced by his North American publisher, Penguin Young Readers Group. The Liverpool newspapers reported that he died after emergency heart surgery.
Set at the pastoral Redwall Abbey in the misty English past, the books are written for children 8 and up. They center on the triumph of good over evil — specifically the hard-won victories of the abbey’s resident mice, badgers and squirrels over the marauding rats, weasels and stoats that perennially threaten their peaceable kingdom.
There are quests and riddles; cunning treachery and chivalric derring-do; and, in a feature that became a hallmark of the entire series, groaning boards spread with sumptuous feasts, lovingly described.
Published in more than 20 countries, the Redwall books have sold more than 20 million copies and inspired an animated series, broadcast on PBS in 2001.
Later titles in the series include “Mossflower” (1988), “Martin the Warrior” (1993), “Doomwyte” (2008) and “The Sable Quean,” published last year.
A truck driver’s son, Brian Jacques was born on June 15, 1939, and reared by the Liverpool docks. At 10, after writing a fine short story about a bird and a crocodile, he was caned by his teacher, who thought it too good to have been the work of a child.
He left school at 15 to work as a merchant seaman, the first in a decades’-long series of blue-collar jobs.
Mr. Jacques’s other books include “The Redwall Cookbook” (2005), a collection of recipes for the dishes featured in the series; his unstinting descriptions of food, he often said, sprang from childhood memories of wartime rationing.
He wrote several non-Redwall books, including a series about the Flying Dutchman, the storied ghost ship.
Mr. Jacques’s survivors include his wife, Maureen; two sons, Marc and David; and a brother, Jim.
His 22nd Redwall book, “The Rogue Crew,” is scheduled to be published in May.
As successful as he became, Mr. Jacques could never quite countenance a life in which labor meant sitting in his garden, under an apple tree, with a typewriter.
“I have a working-class ethic,” he told The New York Times in 2001. “I get up in the morning, and I still feel guilty about being a famous author.”
So sad. I loved his books.
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