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Richard Adams

(1920-2016), Novelist

Richard George Adams

Sitter in 2 portraits
Richard Adams is best known as the author of Watership Down, the world-renowned tale of rabbits at Sandleford Warren. Born in Berkshire, Adams studied history at Bradfield and Worcester College, Oxford. He served in the Second World War, afterwards joining the Civil Service, where he worked until 1974. Adams began writing Watership Down in 1967. The book was rejected thirteen times by various publishers; when it was finally published in 1972, it sold over a million copies in record time in the United Kingdom and the United States. Watership Down has become a modern classic and won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 1972.

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Richard Adams, by John Benton-Harris - NPG P788

Richard Adams

by John Benton-Harris
bromide print, 1974
NPG P788

Richard Adams, by Mark Gerson - NPG x88200

Richard Adams

by Mark Gerson
modern bromide print, July 1974
NPG x88200

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