In 1982, Adams served one year as president of the RSPCA. In 2015 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Winchester. Adams was the recipient of the inaugural Whitchurch Arts Award for inspiration in January 2010, presented at the Watership Down pub in Freefolk, Hampshire. Īt one point, Adams served as writer-in-residence at the University of Florida and at Hollins University in Virginia. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1975. In 1974, following publication of his second novel, Shardik, he left the Civil Service to become a full-time author. Adams won both of the most prestigious British children's book awards, one of six authors to do so: the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. Over the next few years Watership Down sold over a million copies worldwide.

The book gained international acclaim almost immediately for reinvigorating anthropomorphic fiction with naturalism. In 1972, after four publishers and three writers' agencies turned down the manuscript, Rex Collings agreed to publish the work.

He began writing in 1966, taking two years to complete it. They eventually insisted that he publish it as a book. Career Īdams originally began telling the story that would become Watership Down to his two daughters on a car trip. He began to write his own stories in his spare time, reading them to his children and later on, to his grandchildren. After his graduation in 1948, Adams joined the British Civil Service, rising to the rank of Assistant Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, later part of the Department of the Environment. He received a bachelor's degree in 1948, proceeding MA in 1953. Īfter leaving the army in 1946, Adams returned to Worcester College to continue his studies for a further two years. He served in Palestine, Europe, and East Asia but saw no direct action against either the Germans or the Japanese. He was commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps and was selected for the Airborne Company, where he worked as a brigade liaison. In July 1940, Adams was called up to join the British Army. In 1938, he went to Worcester College, Oxford, to read Modern History. He attended Horris Hill School from 1926 to 1933, and then Bradfield College from 1933 to 1938. Richard Adams was born on in Wash Common, near Newbury, Berkshire, England, the son of Lillian Rosa (Button) and Evelyn George Beadon Adams, a doctor. In 1974, two years after Watership Down was published, Adams became a full-time author. Afterwards, he completed his studies, and then joined the British Civil Service. He studied modern history at university before serving in the British Army during World War II. Richard George Adams ( – 24 December 2016) was an English novelist and writer of the books Watership Down, Maia, Shardik and The Plague Dogs.

Watership down by richard adams