The real life origins of Watership Down

July 2, 2024 2:45 PM

Watership Down was inspired by real life death and destruction, but among humans not rabbits (Matt Roper for The Mirror, 2018). "Many of the animals, he later revealed, were modelled on officers from the C Platoon in 250 Company’s Seaborn Echelon, which the writer commanded as a lieutenant in the Second World War. And many of the gruesome stories in Watership Down also came straight from real life, and specifically the Battle of Arnhem, fought over nine days in September 1944 and in which nearly 2,000 Allied soldiers were killed, including in Adams’ company."

Extracts from 'The Day Gone By', by Richard Adams, detailing the events of December 1943 to January 1945 "It would be wearisome - and not really helpful - to give a character sketch of each officer in the company. There were about twelve or thirteen altogether, and they comprised a very strong team, much stronger than any I had yet come across. Apart from that, collectively they have importance to this book, since later, from my memory, they provided the idea for Hazel and his rabbits in ‘Watership Down’. By this I do not mean that each of Hazel’s rabbits corresponds to a particular officer in 250 Company. Certainly the idea of the wandering, endangered and interdependent band, individually different yet mutually reliant, came from my experience of the company, but out of all of us, I think, there were only two direct parallels. Hazel is John Gifford and Bigwig is Paddy Kavanagh."

Full text of The Day Gone By

Full text of Watership Down

Richard Adams AMA from 2013

1978 movie

2018 adaptation trailer

Bunnies & Burrows roleplaying system

Sandleford Park development plans still in play, May 2024

posted by bq (12 comments total)

I feel like it’s obligatory to mention the crust-punk band “fall of efrara”, who made epic metal music about Watership down. Or the mythology of Watership Down? I get confused.
posted by The River Ivel at 3:16 PM on July 2 [4 favorites]

A few years ago I re-visited Watership Down (1978) and realized that some key plot points in the first few seasons of The Walking Dead were similar to those of Watership Down. Also interesting that the pilot episode of The Walking Dead is entitled "Days Gone By."
posted by abraxasaxarba at 3:30 PM on July 2 [3 favorites]

Just want to put in a plug for a recently released graphic novel version.

Npr review says it "tempers darkness with hope" and I think we could all use a little of that these days.
posted by jasper411 at 3:46 PM on July 2 [3 favorites]

in which nearly 2,000 Allied soldiers were killed, including in Adams’ company

[raises hand] so if a company is Army-speak for “a couple hundred dudes,” and he lost 2,000… was he just, like, insanely bad at his job?
posted by Ryvar at 4:00 PM on July 2

…is that why he became a writer?[/rimshot]
posted by Ryvar at 4:03 PM on July 2

I hadn't thought of it like this before, but the absolute horror of Captain Holly's narrative of the gassing and destruction of the warren recalls trench warfare and WWI, and the battle with Efrafa is very much in the style of WWII.
posted by Pallas Athena at 4:13 PM on July 2 [7 favorites]

I want to emphasize that Watership Down was never intended to be some sort of allegory or parable. It is simply the story about rabbits made up and told in the car.

Richard Adams, from the Introduction in later editions of Watership Down

I like this closing paragraphs to the introduction to the book because it is so transparently untrue.
posted by 3j0hn at 4:23 PM on July 2 [4 favorites]

Just a simple story about all this death that I live with for some reason or another, oh well.

Anyone in the mood for hamburger? Leg of lamb?
posted by eustatic at 5:20 PM on July 2 [1 favorite]

>[raises hand] so if a company is Army-speak for “a couple hundred dudes,” and he lost 2,000… was he just, like, insanely bad at his job?

bq didn't say didn't say he lost 2,000 men; it's that in the Battle of Arnhem, 2,000 Allied soldiers were lost, including some from his company,
posted by lhauser at 5:22 PM on July 2 [2 favorites]

Thanks for the graphic novel info, I hadn’t heard of it.
posted by bq at 5:27 PM on July 2

The comic is really good work, and the artist visited the real places that inspired Adams when he wrote the novel. So it's safe to say the environment is very much as he imagined it, although surely much must have changed between the late '60s/early '70s, when I presume Adams wrote the book, and now.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:56 PM on July 2

This explains so much for me about the sad story, and at the same time makes it sadder still.
posted by nickggully at 6:06 PM on July 2