Merseyside Biography Pages
Brian Jacques
In Liverpool Brian Jacques was probably best known for his radio shows on BBC Radio Merseyside but for people around the world he was the writer of the 'Redwall' books. I remember listening to Brian on the radio one day talking about his roots. He said his son had seen the surname Jacques in County Cork and he wondered if that's where his family had come from. Moving forward in time and online biographies of Brian are still getting his ancestry wrong. It doesn't help that there are sources that confidently claim he had both French ancestry and Cork ancestry based on comments made by Brian that were only guesses at establishing his roots, they were not based on any real evidence. Some even claim his parents weren't born in Liverpool. I have a particular interest in Brian's family tree. My grandfather had a cousin called Mary Elizabeth Casey who married Brian's father, James Alfred Jacques, in 1929. They had one child together but sadly both mother and child died in 1934. A year later James Jacques married Ellen Ryan and one of their children was Brian Jacques. My grandfather must have known Brian's father as my grandfather was living at Princes Walk just across the road from 167 Great Howard Street where James Jacques was living on the 1921 census. So to clear up any misunderstandings Brian's father's family were from Lancashire and his mother's family all had Irish roots (various counties with the Ryans coming from County Wexford). There's no French or County Cork links in his family tree.