Richard Adams

Richard George Adams (1920–2016) was an English novelist. Before becoming an author, Adams served in the British Army during World War II and later worked as a civil servant, a career that lasted until 1974.

Adams first conceived Watership Down as a series of stories he told to his young daughters during long car journeys. After receiving initial rejections from multiple publishers, the book was finally published in 1972 and quickly became a literary sensation. His background in civil service and his deep interest in history, which he studied at Oxford, contributed to the book's detailed world-building and its political undertones. Although he wrote other successful novels, including Shardik and The Plague Dogs, Watership Down remains his most famous and enduring work, securing his legacy as a unique and profound voice in 20th-century literature.