A Conversation with Brian Jacques
	Brian Jacques (pronounced "jakes") was born and raised in Liverpool, England, although his Irish roots are immediately evident in his speech.

As a boy he read the classic adventure stories of H. Rider Haggard, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Malory, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

When his working class family required him to leave school at fifteen to get a job, he became a merchant seaman and traveled widely. Returning to Liverpool he found work at various times as a longshoreman, truck driver, bus driver, policeman, boxer, postman, and stand-up comic. As a truck driver delivering milk to the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind in Liverpool, Brian met some of the children there and wrote Redwall for their entertainment. Its vivid descriptive passages were intended to enable the blind children to form vibrant mental images of the Redwall world and its inhabitants.

In a conversation with Brian Jacques during a recent U.S. tour to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Redwall and promote the publication of The Pearls of Lutra, two things become immediately apparent. Brian cares deeply and sincerely about the children who are his ardent fans; and he loves his creation, the world of Redwall.

One hundred letters arrive each week at the Redwall Company Limited, filled with questions about Redwall characters, their fates and futures or suggestions for the next book in the series. Each letter is thoughtfully answered and personally signed. Brian's wife Liz takes special care to ensure that responses are mailed as quickly as possible, which is an especially difficult task after an extended tour. At signings and school visits Brian and Liz speak to each and every child, greeting each one by name, offering each the opportunity for a comment or question.

During our conversation Brian and Liz shared stories of individual children whom they had met on this tour. Redwall readers are not a faceless mass to Brian Jacques, they have faces, names, personalities - and he is interested in each one. "Kids ask questions, they give you ideas," he said. He wrote Outcast of Redwall because "before that kids would always ask what happened to Sunflash when he was lost as a baby? We see him at the end of the book as a fully grown badger lord - all them seasons of his growing up . . ."

To the many readers who are concerned about what happened to Martin the Warrior's father, Luke, Brian promises he is doing another book. "I wanted to see what happened to him myself."

It takes four months for Brian to write a Redwall book - a time he reserves regardless of other demands on his time and energy. "For four months of the year I can sit in my garden behind the lilac bush and retreat to Redwall, which is a good place to be." A nice place to go to retreat from the 1990's. "It's my world, I created it."

Redwall is like a home where there's "a feeling of friendship and warmth, a feeling of safety - kids like that. They like the adventures, across the sea or down over the mountains, but they like to return.

Redwall Book List

Copyright 1998 Bookworm Enterprises