Brian Jacques - Biography

Biography

Brian Jacques was born in Liverpool, England, on 15 June 1939. His parents were James Alfred Jacques, a Haulage Contractor, and Ellen Ryan.

James Alfred Jacques was born in Liverpool in 1907. His parents, Thomas Jacques and Ada Smith, moved to Liverpool from the St Helens area in the 1890s. The Jacques family had Lancashire roots; there is no record of them having French ancestry.

Ellen Ryan was born in Liverpool in 1908. She came from a Liverpool Irish family with roots in a number of different Irish counties. Ellen's father, Matthew Ryan, was born in County Wexford, Ireland in 1872. Ellen's mother, Elizabeth "Cissy" McGuinness, was born in Liverpool in 1882.

Brian grew up in Kirkdale near to the Liverpool Docks. He was known by his middle name 'Brian' because his father and a brother were also named James. His father loved literature and read his boy stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Jacques showed early writing talent. At age 10, assigned to write an animal story, he wrote about a bird that cleaned a crocodile's teeth. His teacher could not believe that a 10-year-old wrote it, and caned the boy for refusing to admit copying the story. He had always loved to write, but only then did he realize the extent of his abilities.

He attended St. John's school until age 15, when he left school (as was usual at the time) and set out to find adventure as a merchant sailor. His book Redwall was written for his "special friends", the children of the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind, whom he first met while delivering milk. He began to spend time with the children, and eventually began to write stories for them. This accounts for the very descriptive style of the novel and the ones to follow.

His work gained acclaim when Alan Durband, a friend (who also taught Paul McCartney and George Harrison), showed it to his (Durband's) own publisher without telling Jacques. Durband told his publishers: "This is the finest children's tale I've ever read, and you'd be foolish not to publish it". Soon after, Jacques was summoned to London to meet with the publishers, who gave him a contract to write the next five books in the series.

Jacques has said that the characters in his stories are based on people he has encountered. He based Gonff, the self-proclaimed "Prince of Mousethieves", on himself when he was a young boy hanging around the docks of Liverpool. Mariel is based on his granddaughter. Constance the Badgermum is based on his maternal grandmother. Other characters are a combination of many of the people he has met in his travels.

His novels have sold more than twenty million copies worldwide and have been published in twenty-eight languages.

Jacques hosted a radio show called Jakestown on BBC Radio Merseyside. In June 2005, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Liverpool.

He lived with his wife in Liverpool. Jacques and his wife had two sons, now adults, David and Marc, and grandchildren Hannah and Anthony. Marc is a carpenter and bricklayer. David is a contemporary artist.

Jacques was admitted to the Royal Liverpool Hospital to undergo emergency surgery for an aortic aneurysm. Despite the efforts to save him, he died from a heart attack on 5 February 2011.