Brian Jacques (pronounced "jakes") was born in Liverpool, England on June 15th, 1939. Along with forty percent of the population of Liverpool, his ancestral roots are in Ireland, County Cork to be exact. He grew up in the area around the Liverpool docks.  After Brian finished school at fifteen, he set out to find adventure as a merchant seaman. He travelled to many far away ports, including New York, Valparaiso, San Francisco, and Yokohama. Tiring of the lonely life of a sailor, he returned to Liverpool where he worked as a railway fireman, a longshoreman, a long-distance truck driver, a bus driver, a boxer, a bobby (Police Constable 216D), a postmaster, and a stand-up comic. During the sixties, when the Beatles put the world spotlight on Liverpool, he and six others including his two brothers, formed a folksinging group known as The Liverpool Fishermen. Mr. Jacques has written both poetry and music, but he began his writing career in earnest as a playwright. Mr. Jacques wrote Redwall for the children at the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind in Liverpool, where as a truck driver, he delivered milk. His writing gained acclaim when Alan Durband, his childhood English teacher, read Redwall, and showed it to a publisher without telling Brian. This event led to a contract for the first five books in the Redwall series.