Obituary: Brian Jacques

HE LABOURED as a docker, a long-distance lorry driver, a merchant seaman, a railway fireman, a boxer, bus driver and policeman. But it wasn't until he became a milkman that Brian Jacques found his calling.

Nearing midlife, Jacques took a job driving a milk lorry 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 pupils. 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.

Jacques died on Saturday in his beloved Liverpool, at 71, reportedly after emergency heart surgery. The death was announced by publisher, Penguin Young Readers Group.

Set at the pastoral Redwall Abbey in the misty English past, his books were written for children eight and upward. They centre 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 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 tables 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.

Later titles in the series include Mossflower (1988), Martin the Warrior (1993), Doomwyte (2008) and The Sable Quean, published last year.

A lorry driver's son, Jacques was born on 15 June, 1939, and reared beside the Liverpool docks. At ten, 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 decades of skilled manual jobs.

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 as a working-class Liverpudlian.

He wrote several non-Redwall books, including a series about the Flying Dutchman, the fabled ghost ship.

As successful as he became, Jacques could never quite countenance a life of leisure. "I have a working-class ethic," he said in a 2001 interview. "I get up in the morning, and I still feel guilty about being a famous author."

He is survived by 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.