Battle of Arnhem audience, as did Richard Attenborough's adaptation of the book into the film of the same name in 1977. Frost, Urquhart and Arnhem veteran John Waddy were hired as military consultants. English author Richard Adams, himself an officer in the seatail of 250th (Airborne) Light Company, Royal Army Service Corps, based the struggle of the anthropomorphised rabbits in his award-winning 1972 novel "Watership Down" (adapted into an animated film in 1978) on the adventures of the officers of the 250 Company of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. Battle of Arnhem The Battle of Arnhem was a major battle of the
Watership Down obituary of Collings, to accept "a book as bizarre by an unknown writer which had been turned down by the major London publishers; but," she continued, "it was also dazzlingly brave and intuitive." Collings had little capital and could not pay an advance but "he got a review copy onto every desk in London that mattered." Adams wrote that it was Collings who gave "Watership Down" its title. There was a second edition in 1973. Macmillan USA, then a media giant, published the first U.S. edition in 1974 and a Dutch edition was also published that year by Het Spectrum.