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Watership Down is the title of Richard Adams's first and most successful novel. The novel is about a group of rabbits and is named after Watership Down, a hill in the north of Hampshire, England. The story is a heroic fantasy with rabbits of human intelligence but in their natural environment. They are depicted as having a culture, including a language (Lapine), proverbs, poetry and mythology. Several chapters present pieces of rabbit lore and many editions also include an appendix of Lapine vocabulary.

It was published in the United Kingdom by Rex Collings Ltd in 1972 and it has never since been out of print. In his struggle to get it into print, Adams had seen it rejected by 13 other publishers. Watership Down is near the area where Adams grew up. The story is based on a collection of tales that Adams told to his young children on trips to the countryside. Adams's description of wild rabbit behaviour was much influenced by The Private Life of the Rabbit by British naturalist Ronald Lockley, although Adams had already written the essentials of the story when he discovered Lockley's work.

Watership Down has been made into an acclaimed classic film and a television series, and is Penguin Books' best selling novel of all time.

STORY:

In the Sandleford warren, Fiver, a young runt rabbit who is a seer, receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. When he and his brother Hazel fail to convince their chief rabbit of the need to evacuate, they set out on their own with a small band of rabbits to search for a new home, barely eluding the Owsla, the warren's military caste.

The traveling group of rabbits find themselves following the leadership of Hazel, who previously was an unimportant member of the warren. They travel through dangerous territory, with Bigwig and Silver, both former Owsla, as the only significantly strong rabbits among them. Fiver's visions promise a safe place in which to settle, and the group eventually finds Watership Down, an ideal location to set up their new warren. They are soon reunited with Holly and Bluebell, also from the Sandleford Warren, who reveal that Fiver's vision was true and the entire warren was destroyed by humans.

At Watership Down, Hazel realises that there are no does among them. With the help of a seagull named Kehaar, they locate another nearby warren called Efrafa, which is overcrowded and has many does. Hazel sends a small emissary to Efrafa to present their request for does. When the group returns, Hazel and his rabbits learn that Efrafa is a police state led by the despotic General Woundwort; Hazel's rabbits barely returned alive. However, the group did manage to identify an Efrafan doe named Hyzenthlay who wants to leave the warren and can recruit other does to join. Hazel and Bigwig devise a plan to rescue the group of rabbits from Efrafa to join them on Watership Down. The Efrafan escapees start their new life on Watership Down, but soon Woundwort's army arrives to attack the Watership Down warren. Through the bravery and loyalty of Bigwig and the ingenuity of Hazel, the Watership Down rabbits defeat Woundwort.