Richard Adams

Richard George Adams was an English writer.

From 1940 to 1946, R. Adams served in the British Army; he was a participant in the Second World War. In 1948 he entered Oxford University, where he studied modern history and literature. From 1948 to 1974 he worked as a civil servant in the Ministry of Local Government (later the Ministry of the Environment). After the publication of his bestsellers Watership Down and Shardik, R. Adams left his ministry job, became a full-time writer, and moved to the Isle of Man (because of the more favorable tax regime there). R. Adams was president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; running as an independent Conservative candidate, Adams campaigned for a ban on fox hunting in England and for animal rights. Speaking about the creation of his first and most famous novel, R. Adams said that it originated from stories about rabbits that he invented and told to his daughters, Juliet and Rosamund, during frequent weekend trips from their London apartment “into the countryside” to a small house called The Downs, southwest of the British capital. At first they were invented and told on the spot; later R. Adams began to write them down. In 1972, for the novel Watership Down, Richard Adams was awarded the Carnegie Medal. He lived in the town of Whitchurch, near Adams’s hometown.

He died on 24 December 2016 at the age of 96.