A Divvil of a Lad is a delayed project of Brian Jacques, and was allegedly an autobiography. In Ask Brian, Volume 4 (circa 2001 - 2002), Jacques said that "Penguin Putnam, my American publisher is planning a biography in the next year or so."
Tentative publishers included Philomel and Penguin. Its current status is unknown.
The project was mentioned in a 2002 Publisher's Weekly article, which stated the following:
- The working title is A Divvil of a Lad--"that's what my grandmother used to call me," Jacques says.
- "The first part tells about when I was a little kid in wartime, growing up in a Catholic working-class parish along the docks in Liverpool," he says. "I was laughing the other week while writing about Sister Mary Veronica. She was from Connemara, and carried a cane as big as herself. Here we were, five-year-old kids at St. John's School for the Totally Bewildered, and when she'd cane you she used to say"--here he softens his voice into a lilting brogue--"'You can thank your lucky stars I'm in a lenient mood, but woe betide you if you ever cross my path again!' Now I'd heard of low tide and high tide and flood tide, but I'd never heard of a woebetide. I figured it was a tide governed by Sister Mary Veronica's lucky stars."
In 2008, the Redwall Wiki asked Brian Jacques about A Divvil of a Lad on a tour stop. Jacques replied that it would likely not be published given his past.