RIP Richard Adams

So 2016 just hadnt taken enough people from us. I didnt intend to end this year with tribute after tribute, I had video games and films to talk about as well as a few other ideas for posts but each and every one of these people who has passed has effected my life very strongly for one reason or another and I would feel bad if I was to ignore there loss.

So Today I am here to mourn the passing of Richard George Adams an English novelist who is arguably best known as the author of Watership Down. Now I will admit that I came across this novel via the film adaption. In fact the last time I talked about WaterShip down on this blog when it was shown at easter and the fact that for a film with a U it had a suprsingly dark edge to it. Well in honesty its not really dark its just realistic and uncompramisingly so. I watched it at quiet a young age and in honesty I think it is a great film and the film led me to the book which is arguably even better. It is a classic piece of literature which I feel the world would be worse without. Richard Adams breathed so much humanity in to the rabbits in his book that you couldnt help but better understand the plights faced by a rabbit in its day to day life, its not suprising that he spent a year as the president of the RSPCA, his work has proberbly made more people stop and think about the animals around them than anyone else and he did it while crafting one of the most enjoyable stories out.

I also think its intresting to note that Adams originally began telling the story that would go on to become Watership Down to his two daughters Juliet and Rosamond during a car trip. The story goes that it was his daughters who insisted that he turn this story in to a book. This process took him two years to complete and the struggle wasnt over there four publishers and three writers agencys turned it down before Rex Collings agreed to publish it. Kind of suprising for a book which would go on to gain international acclaim almost immediately after itse release going on to win both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. I guess if anything can be taken from this story it is that if you have faith in something you have created then stand by it keep pushing and ride out the rejection.

Rest In peace Richard Adams your loss as well as the loss of many of my other heroes this year has been a bitter pill to swallow but swallow it we all must I will end with some words of his own from Watership Down  “Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept.”