Watership Down (Oneworld Classics)

Carnegie Medal

Guardian Children's Fiction Prize

A phenomenal worldwide bestseller for over forty years, Richard Adams' spellbinding classic Watership Down is one of the best-loved novels of all time. Set in the beautiful English countryside of the Berkshire Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage, and survival follows a band of very special rabbits fleeing the destruction of their home by a developer. Led by a stout-hearted pair of brothers, they leave the safety of Sandleford Warren in search of a safe haven and a mysterious promised land, skirting danger at every turn.

A book that resonates as vividly today as it did nearly half a century ago, this keepsake Oneworld Classic edition showcases more than twenty sumptuous, evocative paintings from Aldo Galli, an illustrator chosen by Richard Adams himself.

Exquisite… a treasured keepsake for those whose original version has become tattered, and a delightful introduction to a new generation - The View magazine

'This new edition is quite spectacular' - Bill Heine, BBC Radio Oxford

‘Watership Downis stunning, compulsive reading.' - Sunday Times

'A great book. A whole world is created, perfectly real in itself, yet constituting a deep incidental comment on human affairs.' - Guardian

‘This beautifully written and intensely moving story is the work of an extraordinary imagination.' - Sunday Telegraph

‘An impressive, immensely readable story, held together over 400 pages by a powerful imagination that soon forbids disbelief.' - New Statesman

'A gripping story of rebellion in a rabbit warren and the subsequent adventures of the rebels. Adams has a poetic eye and a gift for storytelling which will speak to readers of all ages for many years to come.' - Sunday Times

'A masterpiece. The best story about wild animals since The Wind in the Willows. Very funny, exciting, often moving.' - Evening Standard

‘This lovely, lovely novel will join those classics which preserve the simpler joys... and there is the wonder of the English countryside, seen with the ground-level detail of a rabbit's eye and ear and nose, the scent and savour of short, sweet grass, the aromatic tiny wild plants, their names used like charms.' - Monica Dickens

‘Quite marvelous... A powerful new vision of the great chain of being.' - New York Times Book Review

‘A classic... A great book.' - Los Angeles Times

‘Spellbinding...Marvelous...A taut tale of suspense, hot pursuit and derring-do.' - Chicago Tribune

Richard Adams, the son of a country doctor, grew up in Berkshire and studied history at Worcester College, Oxford before and after the Second World War, in which he served in the First Airborne division. He originally began telling the story of Watership Down, his first book, to his two daughters to while away a long car journey to Stratford-on-Avon. They insisted he write it down, and it became a huge success on publication with people of all ages, winning both the Guardian Children's Fiction Award and the Carnegie Medal. Watership Down is now considered a modern classic, and recently appeared at number thirty-seven on the Sunday Times list of bestsellers in the last forty years.