Jack Reacher would not exist without Birmingham’s libraries, says writer
It is said that heroes are made, not born.
In the case of the fictional ex-military action man Jack Reacher, it has emerged he was made in a library in Birmingham.
Now many libraries in the city are under threat from closure, prompting Reacher’s creator, the bestselling thriller writer Lee Child, to speak out.
The author, who grew up in Birmingham, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme his 6ft 5in, 250lb protagonist would never have existed without the Second City libraries he visited in his childhood.
He said: “You speak to any writer and they’ll tell you the same thing – that those early years of reading, reading, reading, reading for decades, that’s what turns you into a writer.
“So no book would ever get published if it wasn’t for reading early in your life, and the way things were, you know, my parents were lovely people, and would buy us books if they could afford it. But that was twice a year, at your birthday and Christmas. And so if you wanted to read anything else ever, you had to go to the library.”
Birmingham city council, which is attempting to plug a multimillion-pound hole in its finances, has proposed that 10 libraries could remain open full-time, operating as “community hubs”, while 14 others would open part-time only.
Child, 69, told the BBC he started off using a library in Handsworth Wood, a suburb of Birmingham, adding: “Somebody put it in a wooden hut, and it didn’t have very many books at all, and I’d read them all by the time I was six.”
He then found another library in Perry Barr and “went there at least once a week before I left for university”.
Child added: “I’m so sentimental about it and so emotional about it, because that building saved my life at the time, it enabled it. It largely created it. I just read and read and read and was lost in every subject, anywhere in the world, any time of history. I just adored it, and now it’s under threat.”
Child said he understood that the council was facing financial problems and that his experience was more than 60 years ago when the world was “totally different”.
But he added: “I feel like if you’ve got to cut costs somewhere, that’s a very sad thing, but don’t cut them from libraries, because you are amputating a huge future for a lot of people.”
Birmingham city council has been contacted for comment.
