1974: WATERSHIP DOWN - Why is it so SUCCESSFUL? | Midweek | Writers and Wordsmiths | BBC Archive скачать в хорошем качестве

1974: WATERSHIP DOWN - Why is it so SUCCESSFUL? | Midweek | Writers and Wordsmiths | BBC Archive

"The book is fantasy stripped of sentiment, and children - anti sentimentalists, all - loved it." David Jessel reports on Watership Down, the best-selling novel in which all the characters are rabbits. The enormous success of the book has taken seemingly everyone by surprise - not least the major book publishers, who turned Watership Down in their droves - before one-man London publisher Rex Collings gambled on it, and its first-time author Richard Adams. What is it about this story that has resonated with so many - predominantly urban - people? Richard Adams believes that the book's strength may lie in its mixture of the fantastical and the realistic. Although ostensibly a fairy tale - a story of talking rabbits - it is grounded in the real world, a part of the world which Adams knows extremely well, and his attention to detail in recreating the topography of Watership Down lends his fantasy a credibility that heightens the drama for readers. Though Adams created the story to occupy his children on a long car journey, Watership Down has a attracted a dedicated adult following, and there is much discussion in some literary circles as to the hidden allegorical meaning of the book. Is it an allegory, or just a straightforward adventure? Clip taken from Midweek originally broadcast on BBC One, 5 September, 1974. You have now entered the BBC Archive, a time machine that will transport you back to the golden age of TV to educate, entertain and enlighten you with classic clips from the BBC vaults. Make sure you subscribe so that you never miss a single stop on our amazing journey through the BBC Archive - https://www.youtube.com/c/BBCArchive?... You can also dive into plenty more BBC Archive on our website - https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive