'I knew Christopher Robin – the real Christopher Robin'

AA Milne with his son Christopher Robin
AA Milne with his son Christopher Robin Credit: PA

AA Milne's son came to hate his portrayal in the Winnie the Pooh books, but that wasn't the end of the story. In this article from 19 October 1998, Gyles Brandreth gives an account of his late-life friendship with Christopher Robin Milne

The other day, on a television programme in America, I was introduced as "a guy with a true claim to fame – he once shook the hand that held the paw of Winnie the Pooh".

Yes, I knew Christopher Robin, the real Christopher Robin, the most famous small boy in literature. We first met about 18 years ago when I was writing a musical play about his father, AA Milne. I made the pilgrimage to Dartmouth in Devon where Christopher, then about 60, and his wife, Lesley, owned and ran a bookshop and cared for their severely disabled, grown-up daughter, Clare.

Christopher – slim, a little bent, owlish glasses, tweed jacket – was not at all as I had expected. I had been told I would find him painfully shy, distant, introspective, diffident about his parents, reluctant to talk about Pooh. He surprised me at once. He was consciously charming, courteous, kindly, gentle but forthcoming, amusing, amused. He said: "Of course we must talk about Pooh." He had a mischievous twinkle. "It's been something of a love-hate relationship down the years, but it's all right now."

"Now we are sixty," I said.

He laughed. "Yes, believe it or not, I can look at those four books without flinching. I'm quite fond of them really."

Pooh bear: the original stuffed bear that author AA Milne gave his son Christopher Robin in 1921
Pooh bear: the original stuffed bear that author AA Milne gave his son Christopher Robin in 1921 Credit: Richard Drew/AP

"Those four books" dominated his life. The first, When We Were Very Young, was published in November 1924, dedicated to "Christopher Robin Milne", just turned four; the last, The House at Pooh Corner, was published in October 1928. Within eight weeks, the first collection of verses had sold more than 50,000 copies; by the time the last book appeared, each title was selling several hundred thousand worldwide.

From the outset, they were a phenomenal commercial success and – with the notorious exception of Dorothy Parker who took against them in the New Yorker – they were acclaimed. In 1929, the Professor of Modern English Literature at London University declared: "Of books and authors whose work will be alive a hundred years hence, the two certainties are Conrad and AA Milne's House at Pooh Corner."

Until he was about eight or nine, Christopher "quite liked being famous". He corresponded with his fans, he made public appearances, he even made a record. "It was exciting and made me feel grand and important."

His attitude changed markedly when he went away to boarding school. He was teased and bullied and learnt to hate the boy in the book called Christopher Robin.

Cartoon by Matt

Until then, life had been divided between London – a comfortable house in Chelsea – and the country – Cotchford Farm, near Hartfield in Sussex, on the edge of Ashdown Forest, territory Pooh and co would make world-famous. Mrs Milne dressed her boy not as other boys of the time, as he would have liked, but "girlishly", with "golden tresses" and "curious clothes" – exactly as he appears in Ernest Shepard's drawings.

The centre of his universe had been his nanny, Olive Rand. "For over eight years, apart from her fortnight's holiday every September, we had not been out of each other's sight for more than a few hours at a time."

AA Milne was either at the Garrick Club or at his desk. "Some people are good with children. Others are not. It is a gift. You either have it or you don't. My father didn't."

The House at Pooh Corner: Cotchford Farm,  Sussex, where AA Milne lived there with his wife and son Christopher Robin. 
The House at Pooh Corner: Cotchford Farm,  Sussex, where AA Milne lived there with his wife and son Christopher Robin.  Credit: Rii Schroer

Christopher came to believe that, because his father could not play with his small son and didn't know how or where to begin, he created "a dream son" on the page instead. And it was only when the children's books were behind him, when Nanny was no longer in the way, that father and son began to know one another.

Their friendship lasted nine years, the years of Christopher's adolescence. What did they do together? "The Times crossword and algebra and Euclid." Then came "the inevitable parting" in 1938, when Christopher was 18 and went to Cambridge, then to war, then back to Cambridge to finish his degree.

It was after the war, when Christopher was in his mid- to late twenties that his resentment of his father came to a head. He tried several jobs (including one in the lampshade department at Peter Jones), but failed to find a niche and held his parents somehow responsible for his plight. He came to believe that his 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."

AA Milne with his son Christopher Robin Milne and Pooh Bear in 1926
AA Milne with his son Christopher Robin Milne and Pooh Bear in 1926 Credit: Alamy

This was Christopher's worst period, when he was bitter, resentful, a man "with a household name but no role in life". Meeting his future wife in the spring of 1948 saved him, but it distanced him from his parents still further.

Lesley was a cousin on his mother's side, but Lesley's father and Christopher's mother hadn't spoken to one another for 30 years. The cousins were married and, soon after, set off for Devon to start their life as booksellers. Christopher's mother, "who always hit the nail on the head no matter whose fingers were in the way", was amazed. "You're going to have to meet Pooh fans all the time!" she said.

The decision to move was an odd one, but it worked. The marriage, the bookshop, Christopher's own success as a writer (he wrote three volumes of autobiography) all helped him to come to terms with who he was, who he had been. But he wasn't reconciled to his parents. In his father's last years, he rarely saw him. After his father's death in 1956, his mother lived on for 15 years. He saw her only once.

He had said goodbye "long ago", but he wasn't angry any more. For years he had been fiercely independent, rejecting the idea of any financial help from anyone. To have taken a "lift from my fictional namesake of all people" would have been the final insult. In time, he did take the money: "I had to accept it, for Clare's sake."

The income generated by the four books - published in 30 languages - has been extraordinary. Milne's literary estate is divided four ways, between his family, his school (Westminster), his club (the Garrick) and the Royal Literary Fund. In 1966, the Walt Disney organisation acquired a 40-year film, video and merchandising licence in the Pooh characters. The cartoon version of Pooh appals devotees of EH Shepard's original drawings, but its commercial success is undeniable.

Christopher Robin as he appears in Disney's 2011 animated film
Christopher Robin as he appears in Disney's 2011 animated film Credit: AP Photo/Disney Enterprises, Inc

In his lifetime, the books sold about seven million copies and made AA Milne a wealthy man. But he wasn't interested in money. He was a prolific essayist, novelist and playwright; his passion was his work. Yet, when the children's books appeared, all his previous work was forgotten. Milne was angry that four short books, "containing, I suppose 70,000 words, the number of words in an average-length novel", should obliterate the rest.

He was infuriated, too, by the assumption that, because of them, he had a special "fondness for children". He denied it. "I have never felt in the least sentimental about them," he said. In 1947, without regret, Milne let Christopher's childhood toys - the original Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Kanga - go to America. For years, they toured libraries and bookshops and eventually, with Christopher's blessing, Milne's US publishers gave them to the New York Public Library, where they are now on display. Christopher was content never to see them again. "I like to have around me the things I like today, not the things I once liked many years ago."

Christopher felt that his father was almost jealous of his own creations. "The House at Pooh Corner was to mark his meridian. After that came the decline." Milne was 46. He lived another 28 years. He went on writing - plays, novels, polemics - but the public only really wanted Pooh.

Reading Milne's autobiography, you are struck by the underlying sadness, the painful longing for the golden English childhood that has vanished, the deep frustration that all anybody ever wants to ask about is Pooh. He called the book It's Too Late Now and you sense that, despite having created characters that have joined the ranks of the immortals, he died a disappointed man.

By contrast, I reckon Christopher was happy and fulfilled when he died two years ago. I last saw him in Duke Street, Chelsea, around the corner from the house where he was born. I was giving a talk to a writers' group about his father's work. Christopher arrived, unannounced, and, disconcertingly, sat immediately in front of me, in the first row.

I finished my talk by reading the famous final paragraph of The House at Pooh Corner: "So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing."

"Yes," muttered Christopher, "dammit." And he laughed.

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