Now we are 100: the truth about Christopher Robin

Christopher Robin Milne, the real Christopher Robin, was born a hundred years ago, on 21 August 1920, and I wrote this piece about him for The Oldie magazine this month because I think it’s about time the truth was told.  Christopher Milne 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, 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 sixty.  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, 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 down stairs.’

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, his own eventual success as a writer, each helped him come to terms with who he was.  Publicly he wasn’t reconciled to 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) 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 & Co.  Christopher and Lesley’s only daughter, Clare, who died in 2012, had cerebral palsy and the money helped her parents care for her and establish a charity for people with disabilities that does good work in the West Country to this day.  (www.claremilnetrust.com)

And one more thing.   Christopher’s childhood toys – the original Pooh and Piglet, Kanga and Tigger – now live in the children’s branch of the New York Public Library.  Christopher was happy about that, but he told me it would be lovely if they could come home to England for a holiday someday.  I am working on that.  After all, they are England’s Elgin Marbles.  Watch this space. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, you can visit the Brandreth Bear Collection, including a Christopher-Robin-approved Pooh, at Newby Hall, near Ripon, N Yorks (www.newbyhall.com). Happy birthday Christopher Robin!

PS. It’s the centenary of the great crime writer P D James, too. I am writing about her and her recipes for the perfect murder in the September issue of The Oldie.