Watership Down science fiction writer and conservative social commentator writing in the "National Review", declared that the novel was "pleasant enough, but it has about the same intellectual firepower as Dumbo." He pilloried it further: ""Watership Down" is an adventure story, no more than that: rather a swashbuckling crude one to boot. There are virtuous rabbits and bad rabbits: if that’s allegory, "Bonanza" is an allegory." John Rowe Townsend notes that the book quickly achieved such a high popularity despite the fact that it "came out at a high price and in an unattractive jacket from a publisher who had hardly been
Freefolk Freefolk Freefolk is a village in Hampshire, England. It lies to the west and almost directly alongside the village of Laverstoke; the two villages are separated by the River Test. It is about east of Whitchurch and west of Overton on the B3400 road between Basingstoke and Andover. In the village is an inn named the "Watership Down", known locally as "the jerry". Built in 1840, it was called the Freefolk Arms but was renamed in honour of local author Richard Adams and his book "Watership Down", which took its name from the down about to the north of the