From the archive, 29 March 1973: Adams's heroes

'Watership Down', which has won for Richard Adams the Guardian's award for children's fiction, is the book of the stories that he told to his daughters en route from London to Stratford upon Avon

Richard Adams, whose heroic novel about a group of buck rabbits, 'Watership Down', won the Guardian award for children's fiction, talks to Elisabeth Dunn

CS LEWIS maintained that there were three kinds of children's books. There was the kind where an author sat down and said: "I am going to write a book for children," a category which he did not much favour. There was the kind where an author sat down and wrote a book which children happened to like; and there was the kind where the author sat down and wrote a book which had originally been invented and told aloud to children. Richard Adams has written this kind of book.