Guardian Children's Fiction Prize Watership Down is an adventure novel by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972.

Although they live in their natural wild environment, with burrows, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology.

Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home (the hill of Watership Down), encountering perils and temptations along the way.

[13] In his autobiography, The Day Gone By, Adams wrote that he based Watership Down and the stories in it on his experiences during Operation Market Garden, the Battle of Arnhem, in 1944.

The associate did call it "a mad risk," in her obituary of Collings, to accept "a book as bizarre by an unknown writer which had been turned down by the major London publishers; but," she continued, "it was also dazzlingly brave and intuitive.

Holly's ordeal has left him a changed rabbit and, after telling the others that Fiver's terrible vision has come true, he offers to join Hazel's band in whatever way they will have him.

A few weeks later, the Owsla of Efrafa, led by Woundwort, unexpectedly arrives to destroy the warren at Watership Down and take back the escapees.

While Bigwig fights and injures Woundwort in a narrow tunnel, preventing the rest of the Efrafans from getting any further into the burrows, Hazel, Dandelion and Blackberry return to Nuthanger Farm.

The language fragments in the books consist of a few dozen distinct words, used mainly for the naming of rabbits, their mythological characters, and objects in their world.

[25][26] Watership Down has been described as an allegory, with the labours of Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and Silver "mirror[ing] the timeless struggles between tyranny and freedom, reason and blind emotion, and the individual and the corporate state.

[27] Hazel's courage, Bigwig's strength, Blackberry's ingenuity and craftiness, and Dandelion's and Bluebell's poetry and storytelling all have parallels in the epic poem Odyssey.

[31] Tolkien scholar John Rateliff calls Adams's novel an Aeneid "what-if" book: what if the seer Cassandra (Fiver) had been believed and she and a company had fled Troy (Sandleford Warren) before its destruction?

"[29] Kathleen J. Rothen and Beverly Langston identified the work as one that "subtly speaks to a child", with "engaging characters and fast-paced action [that] make it readable.

"[35] D. Keith Mano, a science fiction writer and conservative social commentator writing in the National Review, declared that the novel was "pleasant enough, but it has about the same intellectual firepower as Dumbo."

"[37] Fred Inglis, in his book The Promise of Happiness: Value and meaning in children's fiction, praises the author's use of prose to express the strangeness of ordinary human inventions from the rabbits' perspective.

[38] Watership Down's universal motifs of liberation and self-determination have been identified with by readers from a diversity of backgrounds; the author Rachel Kadish, reflecting on her own superimposition of the founding of Israel onto Watership Down, has remarked "Turns out plenty of other people have seen their histories in that book ... some people see it as an allegory for struggles against the Cold War, fascism, extremism ... a protest against materialism, against the corporate state.

Kadish has praised both the fantasy genre and Watership Down for its "motifs [that] hit home in every culture ... all passersby are welcome to bring their own subplots and plug into the archetype.

[47] In similar vein, literary critic Jane Resh Thomas said Watership Down "draws upon ... an anti-feminist social tradition which, removed from the usual human context and imposed upon rabbits, is eerie in its clarity".

In his ruling, Judge Richard Hacon ordered Rosen to pay over $100,000 in damages for copyright infringement, unauthorised licence deals, and denying royalty payments to the Adams estate.

Rosen was also directed to provide a record of all licence agreements involving Watership Down, and pay court costs and the Adams estate's legal fees totalling £28,000.

The voice cast included John Hurt, Richard Briers, Harry Andrews, Simon Cadell, Nigel Hawthorne, and Roy Kinnear.

It was produced by Martin Rosen and starred several well-known British actors, including Stephen Fry, Rik Mayall, Dawn French, John Hurt, and Richard Briers, running for a total of 39 episodes over three seasons.

The four episode serial premiered on the BBC and Netflix on 23 December 2018, with the voices of James McAvoy as Hazel, John Boyega as Bigwig, and Ben Kingsley as General Woundwort.

This production was directed by Katie McLean Hainsworth and the cast included Scott T. Barsotti, Chris Daley, Paul S. Holmquist, and Mandy Walsh.

[72] In the 1970s, the book was released by Argo Records read by Roy Dotrice, with musical background—music by George Butterworth performed by Academy of St Martin in the Fields under the direction of Neville Marriner.

[73][74] Alexander Scourby narrated an unabridged edition, originally published on LP in the 1970s by the Talking Books program of the American Foundation for the Blind (NLSB).

In 1984, Watership Down was adapted into a four-cassette audiobook by John Maher in association with the Australian Broadcasting Company's Renaissance Players.

[80] A new graphic novel version of Watership Down was released in 2023, adapted by award-winning author James Sturm and illustrated by bestselling artist Joe Sutphin.

[82] The November 1974 issue of National Lampoon magazine, released shortly after the resignation and pardon of President Richard Nixon, featured a satirical parody of the novel entitled "Watergate Down", written by Sean Kelly, in which rabbits are replaced by rats, described as animals with "the morals of a Democrat and the ethics of a Republican".

[83] The Dropout Dungeons & Dragons series Dimension 20 has a side quest "Burrow's End" loosely based on Watership Down.