The tale of brave rabbits searching for safety when their
warren is threatened was at first rejected by major publishers.
But the adventures of Hazel and Fiver went on to become a
best-seller and the book is now considered a classic.
It was also made into a hugely successful animated film and won
the Carnegie Medal and Guardian Children's Fiction Award.
Adams, a self-confessed countryside-loving man, was a civil
servant who left government after realizing the city was not for
him.
"Watership Down" was created, he told Britain's Telegraph
newspaper in 2014, out of a desire to be a constant parental
presence, telling his daughters the rabbit stories on the way to
school.
"I've got a thing about that. Parents ought to spend a lot of
time in their children's company. A lot of them don't, you
know,” he said.
He wrote many other novels about his childhood and youth, as
well as about a period serving in the army in wartime. Adams
also wrote a sequel to Watership Down, the name of hill in the
north of Hampshire, near where he grew up in the English
countryside.
(Reporting by Elisabeth O'Leary; Editing by Alison Williams)
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