Watership Down author Richard Adams dies at 96

British novelist Richard Adams, the author of "Watership Down", which sold millions of copies and captivated a generation of children, has died aged 96, his family said. Adams, a self-confessed countryside-loving man, was a civil servant who left government after realising the city was not for him. Adams also wrote a sequel to Watership Down, the name of hill in the north of Hampshire, near where he grew up in the English countryside.