Watership Down at 50 Conference

Watership Down Cover by Tracey Knight. Reproduced courtesy of Penguin Books - It was a book that nearly didn't get published. Submitted to more than 30 publishers, Watership Down finally hit bookshelves in November 1972 thanks to the foresight of the small, independent Rex Collings. Nearly 50 years on, a story of a group of rabbits escaping the destruction of their warren has become a children's classic and has been adapted for film and TV. Now academics at the University of Glasgow and Cardiff University are to host a conference to celebrate Richard Adams' debut novel on its 50^th anniversary and examine its continuing appeal to children over five decades. The story of Watership Down began as tales about rabbits Hazel and Fiver that Adams told his young daughters, Juliet and Rosamond, during long car journeys. Today several million copies have been sold worldwide, it has been translated into well over 20 languages and has been adapted several times, including as a 1978 feature-length animated film, and most recently in 2018 as a major animated TV series by BBC/Netflix.