<b>Nilanjana S Roy:</b> Lord of the rabbits

'Watership Down' remains one of the biggest bestsellers in the world

As a boy, growing up in a large family house (“Oakdene”) in Wash Common, Richard Adams often lay still among the bushes of Bull Banks, watching thrushes, chaffinches, blackbirds. 

His earliest memories were of walking through the paddocks, about three years old, the long grasses and moon-daisies taller than his head. He watched slugs and millipedes, felt sorry for the wasps who were drowned in a mixture of jam and beer in large glass jars every year when the nests grew too plentiful, learned the names of birds. To the south of the garden, he could look across the “open