What was watership down based on

Children's Children's 0 - 18 months 18 months - 3 years 3 - 5 years 5 - 7 years 7 - 9 years 9 - 12 years View all children's. Puffin Ladybird. Authors A-Z. Featured Authors. Gifts for bibliophiles. Book Bundles. Writing Workshops. View all. Curated Bundles. Children's Gifts. Stocking Fillers. Penguin Tote Bags. Isokon Penguin Donkey. Richard Adams at the story behind Watership Down. Alice Vincent 09 May Richard Adams, holding a mouse.

Read more. Ai Weiwei: 'I'm the one who talks the most in the art world'. Stanley Tucci on the best meal he's ever eaten. Why Dostoevsky would have loved Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more. As the Guardian reports, the idea for the book came to Adams when his two daughters asked him to entertain them during a long car journey.

It was eventually published in and transformed into an animation in and is now set to return to TV screens in a less gory remake commissioned by the BBC and Netflix. The plot follows Fiver, a young rabbit who predicts the future through the visions he receives. When he sees his warren being destroyed, he tries to warn the rest of the rabbits and urges them to evacuate.

They don't listen so he, his brother Hazel, and nine other rabbits decide to leave to find a safe place to live. Their journey becomes increasingly dangerous as the story goes on with threats like murderous humans and dictatorial rabbits emerging from every corner.

Eventually, they find a safe haven called Watership Down but, without ruining the ending, the tale doesn't end there. For years, many have believed that Watership Down had a secondary, and much deeper, meaning. The dictatorial elements have been described as a metaphor for communism while some viewers have even likened the entire story to a take on Christianity. As of this writing, however, the proposed development, Sandleford Park , was still in its early planning stages.

His elder daughter demanded a story to pass the time. The girls demanded that he write down the ensuing story, although it took 18 months for him to actually put pen to paper. I say: it's a book, and anyone who wants to read it can read it. Parents were surprised that a book about anthropomorphized rabbits could have so much death and violence. Adams says that two characters were directly drawn from life. After the novel came out, Adams and Lockley became friends and—as friends do—took a trip to Antarctica together, and later collaborated on a book about the experience.

Theorists often latch on to the folkloric elements of the story, or attempt to interpret it as a religious allegory. A story—a jolly good story, I must admit—but it remains a story.

Its power and strength come from being a story told in the car. In , the bestseller encountered another phenomenon sweeping the world: Role-playing games.