He remained a passionate Liverpudlian for the rest of his life and told stories of the poverty of the city of his childhood, from the vantage point of its recent extensive redevelopment, as well as his own later acquired wealth. Jacques was born in Liverpool and grew up in the dockland area of the city. Jacques tried other kinds of stories, including The Castaways of the Flying Dutchman (2001) and its sequels, before returning to the Redwall world. As the chronology of publication was different from the chronology of Redwall, the books can be read in any order. The almost annual flow of titles, including Martin the Warrior (1993), Lord Brocktree (2000) and the upcoming The Rogue Crew dotted about chronologically, mining the past history of Redwall Abbey for mythic characters from earlier generations. Worldwide sales exceeded 20m copies, and spin-offs included maps and family trees to increase the sense of reality. The combination of a completely imagined world full of domestic detail – especially the kind of institutional feasts later made familiar at Hogwarts – with a strongly created mythology to underpin them, big-scale plots and Jacques's rolling prose quickly turned Redwall into a leading international brand in children's books. However, their calm is constantly disrupted by waves of violent invaders led by desperadoes such as the rat Cluny the Scourge, a rascally creature with only one eye, a whipping tail which he uses freely, a foul temper and a black heart, who leads a rough band of "bad" creatures, such as weasels, stoats and ferrets.Ī passionate Liverpudlian, Brian Jacques revelled in being recognised within his hometown. Led by the good Abbot Mortimer, the abbey's mission is to keep the world peaceful and ordered. Jacques's vividly created imaginary world is entirely anthropomorphic mice supported by voles, badgers, hares and other peaceable creatures live in a world of harmony within the confines of the abbey and the nearby countryside. Written in a flowing, flowery prose, the simply structured stories tell of the epic struggles between the good inhabitants of Redwall Abbey and its surrounding Mossflower countryside, and the bad invaders who must be kept at bay. Hugely popular with children from the publication in 1986 of Redwall, the first in the lengthy sequence, Jacques's books were among those that they needed no adult guidance to find they latched on to them hungrily and then shared them with friends. Brian Jacques, who has died after a heart attack aged 71, was the author of the bestselling Redwall series.
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