Happy 100th birthday, Winnie-the-pooh!
He told me he loved Winnie-the-pooh – and his father, AA Milne
Christopher Robin Milne, the real Christopher Robin, was born 100 years ago, on 21st August 1920, and I think it’s about time the truth was told. He didn’t hate Winnie-the-pooh.
He didn’t despise his father. He did not regret being the most famous real boy in all literature.
You might think he did from what you’ve read, and from some of the things he sometimes said, but you would be wrong. At the beginning and, more importantly, at the end of his life (he died in 1996, aged 75), Christopher was quite happy with who he was. I know because he told me.
Christopher was the only son of Alan and Daphne Milne. In the 1920s, A A Milne was celebrated as a prolific Punch columnist (the Alan Coren of his day) and a successful West End playwright (the Alan Ayckbourn of his day) and then, between 1924 and 1928, in four small books – two story books and two collections of nursery verses – he created characters and a world that became as universally famous as Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter.
When I first got to know him in the 1980s, Christopher had just turned 60. He seemed older. He was a little bent, with owlish glasses and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. I had been warned that I would find him painfully shy, diffident about his parents, reluctant to talk about Pooh. In fact, he was consciously charming, gentle but forthcoming.
He said at once, ‘Of course, we must talk about Pooh. It’s been something of a love-hate relationship down the years, but it’s all right now. Believe it or not, I can look at those four books without flinching. I’m quite fond of them really.’
Christopher told me that, until he was eight or nine, he ‘quite liked being famous’. He corresponded with his fans, made public appearances and even made a record. ‘It was exciting and made me feel grand and important.’
He felt differently when he went away to boarding school, where he was teased and bullied as the little boy kneeling at the foot of his bed saying his prayers with his little gold head. ‘Hush, hush,’ cried the other boys, ‘nobody cares, Christopher Robin has fallen downstairs.’
After Cambridge and the army during the war years, Christopher failed to find his place in the world and held his parents responsible. For a time, he believed that ‘my father had got where he was by climbing on my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and had left me with nothing but the empty fame of being his son’.
That’s how he felt then, but it’s not how he felt later. ‘I don’t want to blame my parents for anything,’ he told me. ‘My father wasn’t good with small children – some people aren’t – so he created a sort of “dream son” in his books. But we had good years when I was in my teens. We did the Times crossword together and played cricket in the meadow. We had fun.’
In 1948, Christopher married his cousin Lesley and set off for Devon to start a new life as a bookseller. His marriage, the bookshop and his own eventual success as a writer all helped him come to terms with who he was.
Publicly he wasn’t reconciled with his parents. Knowing her, I think that was in large part because of Lesley. She didn’t like them. ‘They weren’t likeable,’ she told me.
In his father’s final years (A A Milne died in 1956, aged 74), Christopher rarely saw him. ‘My father’s heart remained buttoned up,’ he said, ‘but I know he loved me and, of course, I loved him. And, yes, I loved Pooh, too.’
‘And in that enchanted place on the top of the forest,’ I asked him, ‘a little boy and his Bear will always be playing?’
‘I expect so,’ he smiled. ‘I don’t mind.’
And the other thing he didn’t mind, by the way, was the money. When he was young, it didn’t interest him. When he was older, he was grateful for his share of the millions that came with the Disney acquisition of the rights to Pooh and co.
Christopher and Lesley’s only daughter, Clare, who died in 2012, had c cerebral palsy and the money helped her p parents care for her and establish a c charity for people with disabilities, which d does good work in the West Country to th this day (www.claremilnetrust.com).
And one more thing. Christopher’s c childhood toys – the original Pooh and P Piglet, Kanga and Tigger – now live in the c children’s branch of the New York Public L Library. Christopher was happy about th that, but he told me it would be lovely if th they could come home to England for a h holiday someday.
I am working on that. After all, they are E England’s Elgin Marbles. Watch this space.
Y You can follow Gyles on Twitter ( (@Gylesb1) and visit the Brandreth Bear C Collection, including a ChristopherR Robin-approved Pooh, at Newby Hall, near Ripon, North Yorkshire