The True Winnie-the-Pooh

Summary

HISTORY This Week – “The True Winnie-the-Pooh”

Date: August 21, 2025
Host: Sally Helm (The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios)
Guest Expert: Anne Thwaite, biographer and renowned Pooh scholar

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Episode Overview

This episode uncovers the remarkable true story behind Winnie-the-Pooh, the beloved children’s character, drawing direct lines from a Canadian soldier’s impulsive purchase of a bear cub to the literary legacy of A.A. Milne. Through an insightful interview with biographer Anne Thwaite, the episode explores the real-life inspirations for Pooh and his friends, the creative journey of A.A. Milne, and the profound, sometimes painful, impacts that fame and creativity had on the Milne family.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Origin Story: A Bear Named Winnie

• [01:22 – 07:42]
  • In August 1914, amidst the stirrings of World War I, Canadian soldier and veterinarian Harry Colburn bought an orphaned bear cub at a train station in White River, Ontario, for $20.
    • “Maybe he was feeling impulsive, maybe he was feeling lonely. Whatever the reason, he decides that today is the day to buy a bear.” – Sally Helm [03:16]
  • The bear, named Winnipeg (“Winnie” for short), became the mascot for Colburn’s regiment and eventually was left in the care of the London Zoo when the soldiers went to France.
  • At the London Zoo, Winnie was beloved by Londoners, attracting a young visitor named Christopher Robin Milne, who would go on to name his teddy bear “Winnie-the-Pooh.”

2. A.A. Milne and the World of Pooh

• [07:42 – 23:34]
  • Sally interviews Anne Thwaite, historian and Milne biographer, who provides a deep look into A.A. Milne’s life.
    • “I'm Anne Thwaite. I'm a rather aged biographer.” – Anne Thwaite [07:50]
  • Milne was already an accomplished playwright and humorist before creating Pooh, and was deeply affected by his traumatic experiences in WWI.
    • “He said a rather dramatic sentence. It makes me almost physically sick to think of that nightmare of mental and moral degradation, the war.” – Anne Thwaite [10:27]
  • Milne’s only son, Christopher Robin Milne (called Billy Moon by his parents), was born in 1920. Despite Milne’s later protestations of being detached from children, he was in fact a dedicated, attentive father.
    • “They were very, very close. He was a very devoted father.” – Anne Thwaite [12:58]
  • The first seeds of Pooh were sewn during a rainy holiday in Wales when Milne began writing poems (at first to escape a crowded house), pulling from memory, observation, and imagination.
    • “Once he said that there were three things that led to the poems. Memory, observation and imagination.” – Anne Thwaite [14:58]

3. The Creation and Impact of the Books

• [14:41 – 27:18]
  • The success of Milne’s first children’s poetry book “When We Were Very Young” prompted a growing fascination with the “real” Christopher Robin.
    • “Milne and his publishers got letters of appreciation from all over. Three U.S. supreme Court justices wrote to him, so did Fred Astaire.” – Sally Helm [16:09]
  • Mr. Edward Bear (Christopher’s teddy) is renamed “Winnie-the-Pooh”—a blend of the child’s favorite black bear at the zoo and his playful swan-pooh story.
  • Milne wrote stories centered on Pooh and Christopher Robin, using not only memories but deliberate inventions, such as introducing Kanga as a toy in the nursery.
    • “The child already had Poo and Piglet. But Kanga, for instance, was added deliberately by Milne into the nursery…” – Anne Thwaite [22:41]
  • Ashdown Forest, the Milnes’ country home surroundings, became the physical inspiration for the Hundred Acre Wood and locations like “Pooh Sticks Bridge.”
    • “It is the most wonderful place to walk. Towards the end you come down to Pooh Sticks Bridge…” – Anne Thwaite [23:15-23:25]

4. Themes, Characters, and Enduring Appeal

• [23:34 – 27:18]
  • The cast of Pooh includes distinct personalities: the “bear of very little brain,” gloomy Eeyore, optimistic Tigger, and the ever-important Rabbit.
  • The books emphasize themes of friendship, kindness, bravery, and acceptance.
    • “All the stories have such an emphasis on friendship, on kindness, on generosity, on the facing troubles bravely. And they're just good. They're good in every sense. They're well written and they have a good message.” – Anne Thwaite [25:07]
  • The combination of simple, relatable plots and Milne’s sophisticated, elegant writing made the books beloved by both children and adults.

5. The Burden of Fame and Its Lasting Effects

• [25:57 – 28:44]
  • With growing success, the real Christopher Robin became uncomfortably public, to the point that Milne ended the series for his son’s sake.
    • “The dividing line between the imaginary and the legal Christopher Robin becomes fainter with each book. This then brings me at last to one of the reasons why these verses and stories have come to an end.” – Anne Thwaite [26:25]
    • “Moreover, since he is growing up, he will soon feel that he has had more publicity than he wants for himself.” – Anne Thwaite [26:35]
  • Both Milne and his son struggled with the fallout: Milne could not escape the whimsy of his own creation; Christopher Robin Milne was teased and distanced himself from the books and his parents for much of his life.
    • “The effect of the books on the family was disastrous. It totally ruined, in the end, their relationship with their son.” – Anne Thwaite [28:35]

6. Legacy and Remembrance

• [28:44 – 31:14]
  • In later life, Christopher Robin Milne re-embraced the positive aspects of his father’s legacy, working to preserve Ashdown Forest and taking part in tributes to both Pooh and the original bear, Winnie.
  • Statues now honor Winnie in both London and Winnipeg.
  • The books' final chapter beautifully symbolizes the end of childhood, while also promising that, in imagination, “a little boy and his bear will always be playing.”
    • “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.” – Anne Thwaite (quoting Milne) [30:23]
  • Anne Thwaite emphasizes the enduring power of the books for new generations, preferring the original text to any adaptation.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the unlikely beginnings:
  “If a Canadian soldier buying an orphaned bear cub from a trapper is not the way you imagine the origins of Winnie the Pooh, you are not alone.”
  — Sally Helm [07:00]

• On the trauma of war:
  “It makes me almost physically sick to think of that nightmare of mental and moral degradation, the war.”
  — Anne Thwaite, quoting Milne [10:27]

• On writing for children versus adults:
  “He wanted his words to have richness, flavor, bite, and he knew the power of the occasional unfamiliar word.”
  — Anne Thwaite [15:27]

• On the perennial appeal of childhood logic:
  “A good name, because if you called him and he didn't come, you could pretend you were just saying Pooh. I didn't want him anyway.”
  — Anne Thwaite (explaining how “Pooh” was chosen) [18:08]

• On the books' impact on the Milne family:
  “The effect of the books on the family was disastrous. It totally ruined, in the end, their relationship with their son.”
  — Anne Thwaite [28:35]

• On the enchanted ending:
  “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.”
  — Anne Thwaite, quoting Milne [30:23]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:22] – Introduction to the true story behind Winnie, the bear
• [07:42] – Introduction of biographer Anne Thwaite
• [10:27] – Milne’s war experiences and their impact
• [12:58] – Milne as a devoted father
• [14:58] – Milne’s sources of inspiration: memory, observation, imagination
• [16:09] – Global success and real Christopher Robin
• [18:08] – Renaming the teddy “Winnie-the-Pooh”
• [23:15] – Ashdown Forest and Pooh Sticks Bridge
• [25:07] – The books’ themes and messages
• [26:25] – Milne ends the Pooh books to protect his son
• [28:35] – The books’ negative effect on family relationships
• [30:23] – The enduring, enchanted ending of the Pooh stories

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Final Thoughts

This heartfelt and detailed episode ties historical fact, literary history, and personal cost into the narrative behind Winnie-the-Pooh. The blend of archival storytelling, Anne Thwaite’s expertise, and sensitive exploration of the Milnes' experiences deepens the listener’s appreciation for the simple magic—and complex legacy—of one of history’s most beloved children’s stories.

Transcript

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[Sally Helm]

This week is now in its sixth season, which is kind of crazy, but we're continuing to grow and to bring you stories from the past that you've never heard before. There are more ways than ever to follow our show, so yes, you can listen on your podcast app, but now you can also subscribe to History this Week plus on Apple Podcasts for an ad free experience on all new episodes. Also, if you're more of a Spotify person, Spotify now lets you comment directly on individual episodes, so let us know what you think. You can also get email reminders each time an episode comes out. Sign up for [e-mail] and be sure to follow us on our new Instagram page too. There's some fun stuff going on over there. As always, share History this week with your friends. Give us a five star review if you want. And if you want to reach out, shoot us an [e-mail] Five years in, we have a ton of episodes that you can always go back and listen to, and we're also really excited about everything that's coming up. We hope you are too. History this week August 24, 1914 I'm Sally Helm. Last night, a train left the prairie town of Winnipeg and traveled all the way to the shores of Lake Superior in Ontario, Canada. The soldiers had to sleep on board. Some of them were probably nervous, maybe already missing home. They're on their way to a military training camp half a continent away in Quebec. From there, many of them will deploy to Europe to fight in World War I. So when the train stops today in the lumber town of White river, many of the soldiers take the chance to get outside for a moment, stretch their legs, breathe the Ontario air. And when they disembark, they see something strange. A small black bear cub. A lot of the soldiers probably took notice. It's not every day that you see a bear at the train station. But one of them has a particular reason to stop and find out what's going on. 27 year old Harry Colburn is an army vet, not veteran veterinarian. His job is to take care of the horses in this regiment, make sure they're eating right, try to make sure they don't get sick, treat their wounds if they get hit by bullets or shrapnel. Colburn talks to the guy who's brought the bear to the train station and learns that he's a local trapper who shot this cub's mother. He says the orphaned cub is now for sale. And Colburn makes a decision. Maybe he was feeling impulsive, maybe he was feeling lonely. Whatever the reason, he decides that today is the day to buy a bear. He hands over $20, the equivalent of more than $500 today, and brings this bear cub on board the train. She travels with him to training camp in Quebec, then across the Atlantic aboard a military transport ship bound for Europe. While the soldiers are training for battle, Colburn trains this bear cub, giving her rewards of apples and condensed milk. She sleeps under his cot. And she becomes the regiment's unofficial mascot. Weirdly, having an animal mascot for your regiment wasn't all that uncommon. Colburn names the bear for the prairie town where he's been living, Winnipeg. Winnie for short. When Colburn and the other soldiers get deployed to the French warfront, it's clear that Winnie can't come along. So Colburn drops her off at the London Zoo, planning to retrieve her when the war is done. But while he's off fighting in France, Winnie becomes one of the zoo's most popular attractions. And one of the children who comes to see her is a boy named Christopher Robin Milne. He'll later name his own teddy bear after her, Winnie the Pooh. Today, the real people, places, animals, and stuffed animals behind this beloved children's series. How did a real life boy and a real life bear inspire some of the world's most famous literary characters? And what impact did these stories ultimately have on the people who helped bring them to life? What does possibility mean to you? Um, that's a hard question. Something that you can strive for.

[Anne Thwaite]

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[Sally Helm]

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[Anne Thwaite]

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[Anne Thwaite]

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[Sally Helm]

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[Anne Thwaite]

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Whoa, wait. You mean finance? Yeah, finance. Got pre qualified for a Carvana auto loan, entered my terms and shot from thousands of great car options all within my budget. That's cool. But financing through Carvana was so easy. Financed, done, and I get to pick up my car from their Carvana vending machine tomorrow. So financed, right? That's what I said. You can spend time trying to pronounce financing, or you can actually finance and buy your car. Today on Carvana financing, subject to credit approval, additional terms and conditions may apply. If a Canadian soldier buying an orphaned bear cub from a trapper is not the way you imagine the origins of Winnie the Pooh, you are not alone.

[Anne Thwaite]

It's really strange.

[Sally Helm]

A person who was once called the world's leading Pooh scholar agrees.

[Anne Thwaite]

I'm Anne Thwaite. I'm a rather aged biographer.

[Sally Helm]

Anne Thwaite is 88 years old. She's been a writer since the late 1950s, first writing children's books and then turning to biographies. In the 1970s and 80s, one of those books about the English writer Edmund Goss won a big prize. And after that, Anthwaite was under a bit of pressure as she selected her Next subject.

[Anne Thwaite]

A lot of publishers approached me with ideas, and most of them were wildly unsuitable.

[Sally Helm]

But one publisher pitched a person, she a. A Milne, author of the Winnie the Pooh books.

[Anne Thwaite]

I said immediately, well, that would be marvelous if I could, because I'd always loved a Milne. I loved Winnie the Pooh books. I'd read them as a child. He was perfect subject for.

[Sally Helm]

But there was a catch. Thwaite didn't want to do the book without the permission of Milne's living son, Christopher Robin Milne, who inspired the character of Christopher Robin.

[Anne Thwaite]

I had said I wouldn't do it unless Christopher Milne was agreeable, and I understand that he has turned down a number of biographers in the past. In fact, he had said in print that he didn't want anyone to write a biography as far as.

[Sally Helm]

But this time he agrees. He even gives Thwaite permission to access all kinds of archival documents. She's able to visit the Milne country home in southern England, which helped inspire the Pooh books and which was, and still is, closed off to the public.

[Anne Thwaite]

It was a lovely place, remarkably rural and unspoiled. Exactly now, as it was then.

[Sally Helm]

And she gets to meet with Christopher Robin Milne himself.

[Anne Thwaite]

He was delightful, very easy to talk to. In fact, as I found out, very much like his father. I think most people know that he had got very fed up with the idea of being constantly reminded of Christopher Robin and had rather turned his back on the whole thing. But when I wrote the book, of course, he found out a great many things that he didn't know.

[Sally Helm]

Thwaite had to work hard to reconstruct a picture of Christopher Robin's father, Alan Alexander Milne.

[Anne Thwaite]

He was a very private person. He was a very unsociable man, and if I'd met him, I'm not sure that I would have found it easy to talk to him.

[Sally Helm]

Milne was particular. He had no interest in music. He hated liquor. He despised all forms of aggression, from professional soccer to war.

[Anne Thwaite]

He said a rather dramatic sentence. It makes me almost physically sick to think of that nightmare of mental and moral degradation, the war.

[Sally Helm]

Like Harry Colburn, the veterinarian on that train in Canada, A.A. milne fought in World War I. He, too was deployed to France, where he worked as a signals officer, laying communication lines. In the heat of battle, he actually.

[Anne Thwaite]

Went to the song A Ghastly, Ghastly Place.

[Sally Helm]

The Battle of the Somme lasted for months. On the first day of fighting, more than 19,000 British troops were killed and tens of thousands more were wounded. By the time it was all over, more than a million Troops had been wounded or killed. The officer Milne was deployed with was dead within a week. Milne himself gets sent home with trench fever. Near the end of the battle, his fever reached at 1.105 degrees. The horrific things he'd seen in France colored his outlook on the world for a long time afterwards, though he didn't like to dwell on it.

[Anne Thwaite]

When he came to write his own autobiography, he didn't tell us very much about it. He certainly didn't talk about it much in his life.

[Sally Helm]

Through all of this, Milne was working towards his bigger building a career as a writer.

[Anne Thwaite]

I think he wrote four plays while he was still in the army, which was rather remarkable, and they were a great success in London.

[Sally Helm]

Milne was a talented playwright and humorist, fairly well known, in fact, when he first met his future wife, Daphne, she knew some of his magazine pieces nearly by heart. The two of them were already married by the time Milne went to war. And a few years after his return, Daphne gets pregnant. Christopher Robin Milne, the couple's only son, was born on August 21, 1920. A few days later, Milne writes in a letter, dath and Billy, to be.

[Anne Thwaite]

Christopher Robin, but called Billy, are both extremely well. He weighed 10 pounds or so the nurse said. But I suspect that nurses are rather.

[Sally Helm]

Like fishermen in that they tend to exaggerate. The boy had a head of curly brown hair and, as Milne put it.

[Anne Thwaite]

Not a bad little face for his age.

[Sally Helm]

His parents would call him Billy Moon. That was the way he initially pronounced his own last name, Milne. What is his relationship like with his son when he's young?

[Anne Thwaite]

They were very, very close. He was a very devoted father. In fact, he would arrange guests to arrive, not at the time when Christopher was having his lunch. He had to have lunch with Billy first.

[Sally Helm]

Later, in life, in an effort to distance himself from his reputation as a writer for children, Milne would claim, I.

[Anne Thwaite]

Am not inordinately fond or interested in children.

[Sally Helm]

Quote, I have never felt in the least sentimental about them, or no more sentimental than one becomes for a moment over a puppy or a kitten.

[Anne Thwaite]

But all the evidence shows how extremely interested he was in his own son.

[Sally Helm]

And Anthwaite says he was certainly interested in childhood. He himself grew up with a lot of freedom.

[Anne Thwaite]

He was very close to his brother and they explored London on their bicycles, very safe in those days when there were no cars.

[Sally Helm]

It may be that those happy memories were in his mind when, in 1923, another author asked him to write a children's poem for her new magazine and he said yes. The Milnes Were at the time on a holiday in Wales, staying with a group of friends.

[Anne Thwaite]

And as often happens in Wales, it was very wet.

[Sally Helm]

It rains all day in Wales. Milne wrote to a friend in a gloomy tone that we might later call Eeyore. Like it might not have been so bad if he liked the company. But Milne, remember, was antisocial.

[Anne Thwaite]

He was wanting an extra excuse to get away from the other people in the house party.

[Sally Helm]

And so when he gets this request for the poem, it was a very.

[Anne Thwaite]

Good excuse to go and find a quiet place to try and have a go.

[Sally Helm]

Milne had never written for children before, but he locked himself in a back garden and started writing before the trip was over. He'd finished not just that one poem, but a quarter of the poems that that would make up his first children's book called When We Were Very Young.

[Anne Thwaite]

Once he said that there were three things that led to the poems. Memory, observation and imagination.

[Sally Helm]

Memory from Milne's own childhood adventures. Observation of his son Billy Moon, who was named as Christopher Robin in four out of 44 poems, and then, of course, imagination. What do you think it was that made the poems different from other writing for children that was out there?

[Anne Thwaite]

I think a lot of children's writers at that period were writing with limited vocabulary, as indeed many of our most popular writers today do. But Milne never did that. He wanted his words to have richness, flavor, bite, and he knew the power of the occasional unfamiliar word.

[Sally Helm]

Ernest was an elephant and very well intentioned. Leonard was a lion with a brave new tail. George was a goat, as I think I have mentioned. But James was only a snail.

[Anne Thwaite]

If one hears a small child referred to someone as well intentioned, you know that They've been reading A.

[Sally Helm]

A. Milne when we Were Very Young was published in November of 1924.

[Anne Thwaite]

It was hugely successful straight away. And one of the things that was remarkable about it as a children's book was that it was read by adults, bought by adults and given to adults as present.

[Sally Helm]

Milne and his publishers got letters of appreciation from all over. Three U.S. supreme Court justices wrote to him, so did Fred Astaire. And readers around the world began to ask what was the real Christopher Robin like? Milne would later write of the fictional Christopher Robin.

[Anne Thwaite]

To me, he was and remained the child of my imagination.

[Sally Helm]

Milne said he didn't really associate the character with the child who was running around the house, the one he and his wife called Billy Moon. Milne's wife Daphne once said that for Billy in those days, seeing his name in a story or a poem was no more unusual than than a child seeing their face in a family photo album. Still, Milne himself said that imagination was only one piece of the puzzle. Some of it, at least, was observation. One of the poems in When We Were Very Young featured a teddy bear.

[Anne Thwaite]

They stood beneath the window there, the King and Mr. Edward Bear, and handsome, if trifles fat, talked carelessly of this and that.

[Sally Helm]

Mr. Edward Bear was a doll that had been gifted to Christopher Robin for his first birthday in 1921. But at some point between the time Milne sat down to write that poem and a few months after its 1925 publication, Edward Bear got a new name. Like many British kids, Christopher Robin had taken a liking to a particular animal in the London Zoo, a black bear named Winnipeg Winnie for short. And he'd come up with the name Pooh one day while feeding a reluctant swan.

[Anne Thwaite]

A good name, because if you called him and he didn't come, you could pretend you were just saying Pooh. I didn't want him anyway.

[Sally Helm]

And at some point, a child's logic led Christopher Robin to string those names together and begin calling his stuffed bear Winnie the Pooh. The bear soon begins to show up in the bedtime stories that Milne tells his son. Calming stories meant to put a child to sleep. They had to do with a bear and a balloon and some bees. Meanwhile, as Christmas 1925 approaches, sales of Milne's book continue to climb. A headline in a November edition of the New York Telegraph reads, everybody's talking about this book. Above a photo of the real Christopher Robin. Everyone wanted to know, what would Milne write next?

[Anne Thwaite]

And Daphne said, why don't you write down one of those stories that you've told Christopher at bedtime?

[Sally Helm]

On December 24, 1925, the Christmas Eve edition of the Evening News features a front page spread, a children's story by A. A. Milne. A few pages later, a banner headline spells out in all capital letters, winnie the Pooh.

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[Anne Thwaite]

DAFFS and Billy's special request of Winnie.

[Sally Helm]

The Pooh the world Milne created was like his poems, pulled from memory, observation and imagination. In his son's nursery he found the dolls who would become the main characters found and sometimes planted.

[Anne Thwaite]

The child already had Poo and Piglet. But Kanga, for instance, was added deliberately by Milne into the nursery because he wanted to use another character in the.

[Sally Helm]

Story from his wife Daphne. Milne got most of the voices. She'd invented those while playing with Billy. And the grounds of the Milnes country home ended up inspiring the Hundred Acre Wood where Pooh and Piglet and the fictional Christopher Robin played.

[Anne Thwaite]

They could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky.

[Sally Helm]

The real place was called Ashdown Forest.

[Anne Thwaite]

It is the most wonderful place to walk. Towards the end you come down to.

[Sally Helm]

Pooh's Sticks Bridge, so named for the game that the real Christopher Robin would play there with his father.

[Anne Thwaite]

There's great pleasure in dropping sticks into a stream and watching them race each other across and come out the other side.

[Sally Helm]

AA Milne works all of these details and more into his book. Ten months after that first story comes out, he publishes a full book of stories. Winnie the Pooh and the World is introduced to a distinctive cast of characters. There's the lovable Pooh of Closer.

[Anne Thwaite]

They're a very little brain. Eeyore, gloomy and pessimistic. Tigger, boisterous, sort of trying to make the best of things, being optimistic.

[Sally Helm]

Readers young and old would see themselves in the Pooh book characters. Maybe it was Rabbit's self importance.

[Anne Thwaite]

Well, said Rabbit after a long silence in which nobody thanked him for the nice walk they were having. We'd better get on, I suppose, or.

[Sally Helm]

Eeyore's negativity could be worse.

[Anne Thwaite]

Not sure how, but it could be. Each sentence is beautifully crafted. They're just so funny.

[Sally Helm]

The chapters told readers just what they were getting. Chapter one, in which we are introduced to Winnie the Pooh and some bees. And the stories begin.

[Anne Thwaite]

Chapter four, your losers are tail. They're descriptive, aren't they?

[Sally Helm]

The plots are simple. Christopher Robin throws Pooh a party. Piglet gets stuck in a flood.

[Anne Thwaite]

It's a little anxious, he said to himself, to be a very small animal entirely surrounded by water.

[Sally Helm]

The characters have adventures and misadventures. They're self aware. They accept one another flaws.

[Anne Thwaite]

And all the stories have such an emphasis on friendship, on kindness, on generosity, on the facing troubles bravely. And they're just good. They're good in every sense. They're well written and they have a good message.

[Sally Helm]

The next year, 1927, Milne publishes another Installment of the Pooh stories, a book of poetry called Now We Are Six. The year after that comes the House at Pooh Corner. The books were extremely popular. Each new publication saw even greater demand. And the name Christopher Robin becomes famous. Readers didn't always like Christopher Robin, the character in the stories. He's a sort of parental figure.

[Anne Thwaite]

Some people think that he's too good to be true for A.

[Sally Helm]

A. Milne, Christopher Robin, the character, and Billy Moon, his son, were always different people, but readers nevertheless were interested in knowing more about the real Christopher Robin, who was, of course, just a child. Milne became more and more uncomfortable with this, and in 1929 he writes a letter to his devoted readers.

[Anne Thwaite]

The dividing line between the imaginary and the legal Christopher Robin becomes fainter with each book. This then brings me at last to one of the reasons why these verses and stories have come to an end.

[Sally Helm]

To an end, Milne says there will be no more Winnie the Pooh books. He writes, the legal Christopher Robin has already had more publicity than I want for him. Moreover, since he is growing up, he will soon feel that he has had more publicity than he wants for himself.

[Anne Thwaite]

But of course, it was too late. He couldn't stop people being interested in the child.

[Sally Helm]

Milne tries to pivot back into writing for adults. In 1931, he publishes a new novel and sets off on a book tour to promote it.

[Anne Thwaite]

But everyone was more interested in asking about Christopher Robin than they were in asking about him himself.

[Sally Helm]

Milne couldn't escape the world he'd created in the Hundred Acre Wood. Readers had come to expect certain things from him. Though he'd once been a popular playwright, after Pooh, Milne would never have another successful play.

[Anne Thwaite]

Play.

[Sally Helm]

And he came to resent the way that people received his work.

[Anne Thwaite]

He said even if he wrote something as simple as the Cat Sat on the Map, everyone would turn it into a whimsical cat. In fact, when he died, his obituary in Time magazine was headed. The man who hated whimsy.

[Sally Helm]

Christopher Robin couldn't escape people's expectations of him either. And he couldn't escape his. His fame. In 1933, Parents magazine ranked Christopher Robin Milne, then only 12, as one of the most famous children in the world.

[Anne Thwaite]

He was teased and not bullied exactly, but made pretty unhappy and distanced himself. He came to hate. It wasn't the books, really. It was his own identification with them.

[Sally Helm]

By the time Christopher Robin grew up and had a career of his own as a bookseller. In fact, he refused to take any money from the Pooh books. After he got married, Christopher hardly spoke to his parents again.

[Anne Thwaite]

The effect of the books on the family was disastrous. It totally ruined, in the end, their relationship with their son.

[Sally Helm]

In Christopher Robin's later life, though, he would return to his father's legacy. He led a fight to protect Ashdown Forest from development. He helped restore Pooh Sticks Bridge. It's now a popular destination for Winnie the Pooh fans, and Thwaite often takes groups of students there.

[Anne Thwaite]

Now you have to take some sticks with you. You have to gather them further up in the forest, because all around the bridge itself, you won't find any. There are so many visitors.

[Sally Helm]

He even helped pay homage to the strange Canadian story that helped give Pooh a name. In 1981, Christopher Robin unveiled a statue of the real bear, Winnie, at the London Zoo. There's also a statue in Winnipeg, Canada, of Winnie with the veterinarian. Harry Colburn, one of Colburn's great grandchildren, said that she grew up calling Winnie her great grand bear. And of course, Winnie the Pooh went on to be immortalized by Walt Disney. So millions of children have grown up with Milne's characters as a feature of their childhoods. The End of the Books is about the end of childhood. The last chapter of the last book is called, in which Christopher Robin and Pooh come to an enchanted place, and we leave them there. In the final paragraphs, Christopher Robin says.

[Anne Thwaite]

Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you? Understand what? Oh, nothing. He laughed and jumped to his feet. Come on. Where? Said Pooh. Anywhere, said Chris Robin. 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. And that's the end of the book.

[Sally Helm]

Anne Thwaite has read those books to her children and her grandchildren. Soon, she thinks, her great grandchildren will be old enough to appreciate them. The movie version, she says, just isn't the same. She always hopes people will pick up the actual books. In fact, she reread them herself just before we spoke to her.

[Anne Thwaite]

I really did enjoy reading last night. I always forgotten things and find other things, but basically it survives extremely. And I rather wished I'd had a child in the house to read it to.

[Sally Helm]

Thanks for listening to History this week. For more moments throughout history that are also worth watching, check your local TV listings to find out what's on the History Channel today. If you want to get in touch, shoot us an email. Email at our email address, historythisweekhistory.com or you can leave us a voicemail 212-351-0410 special thanks today to Anne Thwaite. Her most recent book about Milne and Winnie the Pooh is titled Goodbye Christopher Robin. This episode was produced by Julia Press. History this week is also Produced by Julie McGruder, Ben Dickstein and me, Sally Hannah Helm. Our editor and sound designer is Bill Moss. Our researcher is Emma Fredericks McCamey Lynn is our senior producer. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz and Ted Butler. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review History this week, wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you next week.