Lord of the lies

HIS books are full of talking woodland creatures engaged in a battle between good and evil in some far-away land. Old fashioned, traditional children's stories, in other words. In this age of the CD Rom interactive experience, kids shouldn't be giving them house room. But they cannot get enough of Brian Jacques. His Redwall sagas have sold more than two million copies; his website receives more than 3.7 million hits a year from 120 countries.

Jacques' success proves that children still like nothing better than a rattling good yarn. And he's been spinning them for more years than he'd care to remember.

"I am an old fashioned story teller, me," said Jacques in unmistakable Liverpool brogue. "Even when I was a kid I was the worst liar."

One of the first indications of his talent came at his inner city school. He wrote a story that was so good his teacher didn't believe he could be its author, and he was punished for lying.

It wasn't the most nurturing environment. "No authors came to our school. Every beggar wanted to be a footballer.

"The old man said, 'when you're 15 get out of school and get a job. Get some wages on the table for your mam.'

"To me, authors were people with lovely long names like Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. If I'd said: 'Hey dad, I want to be an author' I'd have got wellied round me ear."

One teacher encouraged him, however, and he remembers saving up seven shillings and sixpence to buy second-hand copies of The Illiad and The Odyssey.

From leaving school he had a variety of jobs, including merchant sailor, boxer, policeman and postmaster.

But his creative side was never suppressed. He formed a folksinging group and performed as a stand up comedian. He still loves to perform, as York children discovered to their delight when he came to Waterstone's in York earlier this month.

Jacques also wrote poetry and his three stage plays, Brown Bitter, Wet Nellies and Scouse, were all performed in Liverpool.

The Redwall saga emerged during his stint as a lorry driver. Jacques drove a milk wagon, and one of his deliveries was to a blind school in Liverpool.

He decided to write stories for the pupils, something very visual to stimulate their imaginations.

It was never his intention to publish the manuscripts, but a friend who was a teacher read them and sent them to a publisher. Did the success of Redwall change his life? "I'll say it changed it! It changed my life wonderfully.

"You are doing the thing that you love best, getting recognition for it, you're famous for it, you're getting letters from all over the world... I was shocked.

"I always hoped there'd be something some day. It took me a long time to get here."

Lord Brocktree is the latest Redwall tale. Like the other 12 in the series, Jacques wrote it on a manual typewriter in his garden. It tells the story of one of the badger lords and his fight against the Blue Hordes.

Why are all his characters animals? "It's more identifiable for the children," he explained. "You have said to someone, 'you dirty rat' - right away you have identified them.

"As sly as a fox, as slippery as a snake: it is clear who is good and who is evil."

Unlike, say, the Harry Potter books, there are no spells or sorcery in Jacques' stories. "I like the kids to have a good adventure.

"You have got to have some of the values of life in them. But to tell a story in this writing tradition, you don't wave a wand and a big fat fairy comes out and makes everything all right."

His books include battle scenes, but he does not feel that they are too violent for children.

"In the Sixties they tried to make the world the other way, with people putting flowers down gun barrels. It didn't work if the other guy pulled the trigger," he said.

"I look at it this way. If you want real violence, pick up the Bible and read that.

"My violence is not gratuitous. It happens for a reason. There are lessons in courage." He says his stories have helped children who were bullied stand up for themselves.

Jacques is delighted his books encourage children to read. Television "was destroying all civilisation", replacing real communities with the false ones of soap operas. Nevertheless, he has allowed his Redwall books to be turned into a TV series aired on Channel 5.

"I don't mind TV series as long as I have control," he said. But he draws the line at Redwall computer games, considering them mindless: "You know, 'I have got to the seventh level, now splat the rat'.

"Primarily," he adds, "I like my books as books." And so do his many young fans.

Lord Brocktree by Brian Jacques is

published by Hutchinson, at £12.99