The author of Watership Down, Richard Adams, has died aged 96.
The statement announcing his death on his website quoted a passage from the end of his best-known work. It read: “It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch his rabbits and to try to get used to the extraordinary feeling that strength and speed were flowing inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek young bodies and healthy senses.
“‘You needn’t worry about them,’ said his companion. ‘They’ll be alright – and thousands like them.”’
Juliet Johnson said her father had been “ailing for some time” but “died peacefully” on Christmas Eve. Watership Down, a children’s classic about a group of rabbits in search of a new home after their warren was destroyed, was first published in 1972.
Adams was 52 when he wrote it, after first telling the story to his two daughters on a long car journey. It went on to become a best-seller, with tens of millions of copies bought around the world.
Juliet Johnson told BBC Radio 4 that she had a “long talk” with her father on the night before he died. “I assured him that he was much loved, that he had done great work, that many people loved his books,” she said.
Describing Christmas Eve as “rather a magical night”, she said: “It’s the night that traditionally the animals and birds can talk. “It was absolutely typical of Dad that he would choose such a night on which to leave this world.”
A new animated series of the book, co-produced by the BBC and Netflix, is due to be aired in 2017 with four hour-long episodes. Sir Ben Kingsley, Olivia Colman and John Boyega have been cast to provide voices in the new adaptation.
Watership Down was made into a film in 1978 and enjoyed huge success, but was notoriously frightening for young audiences, with its adored rabbit characters killed in graphic scenes. The film’s theme song “Bright Eyes”, sung by Art Garfunkel, spent six weeks at the top of the UK charts the following year.
