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| Name: | Richard Adams | |||
| Birth: | May 09 1920 | |||
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Richard George Adams (born 9 May, 1920) is an English novelist who is best known as the author of Watership Down.
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Early years
Adams was born in Newbury, Berkshire. From 1933 until 1938 he was educated at Bradfield College. In 1938 he went up to Worcester College, Oxford to read Modern History, later to continue his education later after his service in 1946 and obtain his Master's degree from there in 1948. Shortly after the declaration of war between the UK and Nazi Germany, Adams joined the British Army, he saw action in the heavy fighting at Arnhem in Holland with the British Airborne Army, he continued to serve until 1946. He received a class B discharge (which means that under certain circumstances he could be recalled to duty.)
After his discharge, Adams returned to Worcester to continue his studies for a further two years. He took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1948 and of Master of Arts in 1953.
In 1948, after graduation, he accepted a position in government, and eventually became a senior civil servant working as an Assistant Secretary for the Department of Agriculture. It was during this time that he began writing in his spare time.
Author
In 1972, Adams published Watership Down, from which he gained international acclaim. In 1974, following publication of his second novel, Shardik, he retired from government service, and since then has been a full-time author.
He originally began telling the story of Watership Down to his two daughters, and they insisted he publish it as a book. It took two years to write and was rejected by 13 publishers. When Watership Down was finally published, it sold over a million copies in record time in both 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. To date, Adams' best-known work has sold over 50 million copies world-wide.
Personal life
At one point Adams served on Faculty at the University of Florida.
He now lives with his wife, Elizabeth, in Whitchurch, Hampshire, within 10 miles (16 km) of his birthplace. Their daughters, to whom Adams originally related the tales that became Watership Down, are Juliet and Rosamund.
