A bedtime story for two young girls became a masterpiece of epic rabbit literature.
In short: Richard Adams improvised this tale during long car trips to entertain his daughters, Juliet and Rosamond. What began as an off-the-cuff narrative about a group of rabbits seeking a new home evolved into a celebrated novel, drawing on military history and natural science to create a complex, mythic world.
The story of Watership Down began as a series of improvised tales Richard Adams spun for his daughters during car journeys. Their persistence led him to record the narrative, a process he completed over 18 months. The resulting novel, published in 1972, follows a band of rabbits who flee their doomed Sandleford warren to establish a new home on the hill of Watership Down. Along the way, they encounter various perils, including a deceptive warren where rabbits are harvested by a farmer, and the totalitarian regime of Efrafa.
Adams infused the rabbits with their own culture, language, and mythology, but grounded their behavior in the work of naturalist Ronald Lockley. The novel also reflects Adams's own experiences during the 1944 Battle of Arnhem. He modeled the rabbit leader Hazel on his commanding officer, Major John Gifford, and based the warrior character Bigwig on Captain Desmond Kavanagh, who is interred at the Airborne Cemetery in Oosterbeek, Netherlands. This blend of personal history and animal behavior helped the book win awards like the Carnegie Medal.
The manuscript faced significant rejection, turned down by seven publishers before Rex Collings accepted it. Collings, a one-man operation, lacked the capital for an advance but successfully placed review copies across London. The book's success spawned a 1978 animated film, a television series, and a 2018 adaptation. Adams eventually returned to the world of his creation in 1996 with a collection of short stories, Tales from Watership Down, ensuring the legacy of his characters—from the visionary Fiver to the clever Blackberry—remains a staple of modern literature.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Watership Down
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