ALSO LOOK OUT FOR…

For £100,000-150,000, you might reasonably expect this map to point you in the direction of the City of Gold or the Kruger Millions or the wreck of the Flor do Mar – but it is the modestly sized piece of paper itself that is the treasure. This, billed as ‘probably the most famous map in English literature’, is the original drawing of Hundred Acre Wood, home to Winnie the Pooh.

Reproduced on the endpapers of AA Milne’s first book about that ‘silly old bear’ (Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926), it is presented as the work of Christopher Robin himself and is signed ‘Drawn by me and Mr Shepard helpd’ [sic].

That’s Ernest Howard Shepard, whose illustrations so brilliantly complemented Milne’s stories. Shepard’s contribution to the success of the book was great enough, in fact, that Milne felt compelled to share his royalties with the artist.

Shepard, who also provided a definitive set of illustrations for The

Wind In The Willows in 1931, found it somewhat irritating that Pooh came to overshadow his other work, so it is perhaps unsurprising that he sold the drawing of Hundred Acre Wood in the same year that Winnie-the-

Pooh was first published. The map obviously had greater sentimental value to the most recent owner: when it is auctioned by Sotheby’s in London on 10 July, it will become available to buy for the first time in nearly 50 years.