Literature in the 1970s "Watership Down" by Richard Adams, a juvenile novel about a family of rabbits which found a home in mainstream literary circles. Joseph Heller's dramatic novel of middle age, "Something Happened", was the author's first book since "Catch-22" in 1961. James A. Michener also returned to prominence in the seventies, first with "Chesapeake", a story of four families interwoven throughout their interactions in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland, and later with "Centennial", a historical novel about a family living in Colorado in the time of the 1870s. In 1976, "Centennial" was adapted to a popular television miniseries. John Jakes would
Richard Adams Civil Service to become a full-time author. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1975. At one point, Adams served as writer-in-residence at the University of Florida and at Hollins University in Virginia. Adams was the recipient of the inaugural Whitchurch Arts Award for inspiration in January 2010, presented at the Watership Down pub in Freefolk, Hampshire. In 2015 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Winchester. In 1982, Adams served one year as president of the RSPCA. Besides campaigning against furs, Adams wrote "The Plague Dogs" to satirize animal experimentation (as