Adams, Richard (George)

(British, 1920– )

Richard Adams was born in Berkshire, and served in the forces and the civil service before turning to fiction full-time. His first and most celebrated novel is Watership Down (1972), the story of a group of rabbits searching for a new home. The book, which draws on ancient myths and legends, began life as a children's story, but can also be seen as a novel about the need to live in harmony with the natural world. The Plague Dogs (1977) is the story of two dogs who escape from a laboratory, while myth and psychology are made the explicit subject of The Girl on the Swing (1980), in which an enigmatic woman acts as a link to the English pagan past. Shardik (1974) and Maia (1984) are ambitious fantasy novels set in the fictional world of the Belkan Empire.

Henry Willamson, Paul Gallico  WB