They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.
(James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis)
This is not meant as a listing of every Watership Down page on the net - for one thing, regrettably many of those are simply thrown together with little forethought or originality; I have no interest in pages consisting simply of pictures taken from elsewhere. Nor is it meant as a comprehensive list of the half-decent ones; that's what the Webring's for. (For various reasons, the link to that is on the home page rather than here.)
No; this Links page is an unashamedly biased selection of a few WD sites that I personally find most interesting and enjoyable. I've got a lot from the sites I mention here, and it's my hope that you will find the same if you visit them. =:)
This is the place to be for WD discussion (as opposed to role-playing - though you can certainly ask for directions to RPG clubs there). Absolutely anything concerning the story is open to discussion: whether you want to put forward a revolutionary new theory about the significance of Thrayonlosa's death, complain about the persistent marketing of the novel as a "children's book" in the UK, or simply argue about the merits or otherwise of General Woundwort, this is the place for you. You'll need a Yahoo ID to post or get at the Files section, but they're free to get, and in any case we have public archives, so you can lurk for a while and read what we have to say before jumping in. (Or possibly running screaming for the hills. One or the other.) Oh, and I'm a moderator here, so watch it! =;P
Dozens of stories and poems relating to Watership Down. As usual with fanfic, they vary wildly in length, quality and style, but this is still by far the best place to go to read more about our favourite rabbits. The section was very quiet for a while a few months ago, but some excellent stories have been uploaded since then. Try RogueFanKC's The CrossBearer (now approaching completion after over a quarter of a million words!) or Shinwolf's two Chronicles of a Rah (especially the second) to see just how fine some of these are. I'd also recommend Blackavar's Gift, but then I wrote that one, so I don't want to start hyping it up too much. =;)
Despite the somewhat unpromising name (not at all like Bits'n'Bob-stones, oh no indeed =;) ), this is actually a superb site. Owner Entei-rah (also the owner of the WD Webring, and - declaration of interest time - a very good friend of mine) is, unlike most WD types, a great fan of the animated TV series which ran to two seasons (in Britain; three in some other countries), and has done a huge amount of work in creating this site. The number of vidcaps has to be seen to be believed - and that's before you consider that he's done a lot from the Nepenthe film too. That's not all, though: Entei-rah has also written two series of fanfic carrying on from where series 2 of the TV show left off, and is currently working on a third. They're well worth a read. Another very welcome feature of the site is the Fanart section, which provides a home for an increasing number of artists - and some of the drawings there are of quite superb quality. There's plenty more on TUS, but I just haven't got the space to mention everything! =:P
This is an extremely well-known and well-liked site, and it's not hard to see why. Chris Boyce has given us pages and pages of photographs from almost every significant location in Watership Down, mostly taken in the 1980s. Unfortunately there have been changes since, most notably and sadly the fencing off of the Beech Hanger and the devastation of the Great Beech. However, the photos are still very atmospheric and give an excellent idea of the rabbits' epic journey. A new feature for 2004 is a small collection of fascinating and detailed essays about how Chris's life has been affected by WD.
Making a welcome return after a period away is Patrick Jemmer's scholarly extension of the Lapine language. Professor Jemmer has developed the idea of "aleolinguistics", the study of the "subcreation" of languages in literature, and a number of scans of his second thesis, Schema Aleolinguistica, are available at this site, together with brief background information. The full work is sadly not available online, but enough is here to give a good flavour of the nature of the work. He does still list the old address for Bits'n'Bob-stones, despite my having emailed about this some time ago, but I won't hold that against him!
Like it says, "your source for heavily censored news". This is the place to go for information about goings-on in Efrafa. Oh, and random maimings too. Definitely random maimings. Sadly the site hasn't been updated since March 2001, and there isn't as much content as there might be, but what is there is well worth a look, and is likely to provoke hysterical snufflings... =;)
Copyright © David "Loganberry" Buttery 2004-6. Updated 01/03/06.