Watership Down author Richard Adams dies aged 96

The author of the children´s classic, Watership Down, Richard Adams has died at the age of 96.

After serving in the military during World War II, he returned to studying modern history before entering the civil service.

His most famous work is said to have taken two years to write and was rejected by at least four publishing houses.

The story of the rabbits who must search for a new home was eventually published in 1972 and went on to become a classic.

Other works which cemented his fame are his 1974 novel Shardik and his 1977 work The Plague Dogs.

Adams, who lived in Whitchurch in Hampshire, won both the Carnegie Medal and Guardian Children´s Fiction Prize.