I told a porkie yesterday. Discussing the notion of heroes I said <em>Watership Down</em> was a book about rabbits. Did you squeal.... <em>For the love of God no</em><em>!</em>

You should have done. <em>Watership Down</em> is <em>apparently</em> about rabbits. But actually it's about the same thing all books are about. The one and only subject we really know. Clue: rabbits can't talk. It's about us. Human beings. It's a metaphor for two of the perennial unanswerable conundrums we all face. Why are we here as individuals? Why do we exist as a species? And it's a metaphor that stems from a real piece of history too. Let me elaborate.

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In <em>Watership Down</em> we meet a small, happy endangered community of rabbits that, in the face of imminent destruction, has to find a new home. Richard Adams improvised the story in his head for his kids, but recalls that some of it came from his experiences in the army in the Second World War. Is there a connection? I think so. The community is led by someone called the <strong>Chief Rabbit</strong> (our hero Hazel as the book progresses). Getting my drift?

Now I'm sure Adams would reject this idea, as he's already rejected suggestions that there's some kind of religious symbolism inside the book, in particular its highly-detailed mythology. But you mustn't expect authors to understand completely what they write about or why they are writing it. Much of the time we're just channelling our subconscious onto the page, staring at the results and thinking, 'Does that work... oh Lord I hope so.'

<em>Watership Down</em> is a wonderful epic fantasy that documents fundamental human issues -- the need for freedom, security and an organised society -- in the form of a children's story. The event that kicks off the tale -- the need to escape the original doomed warren of Sandford for the safer haven, a place truly of their own, Watership Down, defeating the evil General Woundwort along the way -- seems, to me anyway, directly linked to a real and truly horrible piece of recent history.

Here's my proposition. The flight from Sandford and the search for Watership would not have taken place without the Second World War. The quest of the community in <em>Watership Down</em> mirrors the exodus of Jews from persecution and the Holocaust and their search for a homeland they could call their own forever. The similarities are too many to be ignored. The flight in the face of harsh, merciless violence and the threat of total destruction, the portrait of a tightly-knit oppressed community composed of the weak and the strong, divided into factions, held together by core beliefs. Led by the vision of the Chief Rabbi<span style="text-decoration:line-through;">t</span>.

That's not to say Adams wouldn't have written something like <em>Watership Down</em> had the Second World War not happened. I simply struggle to believe it would have contained the precise odyssey -- Exodus -- the rabbits make in the story or, perhaps, have invented a rabbit Nazi like Woundwort.

So, in a nutshell, without Hitler we would never have had Fiver or Hazel or all those other elements in a truly memorable and timeless tale.

Oh, and we'd never have had Art Garfunkel singing that bloody <em>Bright Eyes</em> song in the movie either, which is one more reason why even an old atheist like me can hope Hitler is now roasting in Hell.

We're a selfish race. Be it fantasy, kid's books, anthropomorphic myth cycles or just plain everyday fiction, when it comes to storytelling we still have only one subject: ourselves. There's a good reason for that. We are the most interesting -- and the only -- show in town.