Richard Adams

Richard Adams, born in 1920, British writer of fiction and folktales for both adults and children. His best-known work is the novel Watership Down (1972; film version 1978), for which he received the Carnegie Medal (1972) and the Guardian Award (1973). This story about a community of rabbits and its search for a new warren is memorable for the power of its narration and its detailed, knowledgeable descriptions of the countryside and wildlife. The novel has also been interpreted as a political allegory offering a parallel between the various warrens that the rabbits visit and different systems of government and their effects.

Richard George Adams was born in Newbury, Berkshire, England, and educated at Worcester College, University of Oxford, where he studied modern history and received his master of arts degree in 1948. Adams spent the years from 1940 to 1946 in the British army, serving during World War II (1939-1945). Prior to becoming a full-time writer, he was a successful civil servant from 1948 to 1974. Adams is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts.

His other works include Shardik (1974) and Maia (1984), both set in the imaginary Beklan Empire; The Plague Dogs (1977), written in a similar vein to Watership Down; The Girl in a Swing (1980), one of his few works with a human main character; Traveller (1988), which recounts the events of the American Civil War (1861-1865) from the perspective of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's horse; and a collection of folktales, The Iron Wolf and Other Stories (1980). Almost all of Adams's works have received mixed critical reviews but enjoyed solid popular success.