The boy who inspired A.A. Milne’s enchanting stories, Christopher Robin Milne, paid the price of fame
Why the Real Christopher Robin Hated Winnie-the-Pooh
Updated Aug. 19, 2024
Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood where Christopher Robin played, you’ll find the enchanted neighborhood where a bear, pig, rabbit, donkey, owl and, inexplicably, two kangaroos and a tiger lived and socialized in rural England. While the entire premise of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books requires some serious suspension of disbelief, one character had a real-life counterpart: Christopher Robin, whose full name was Christopher Robin Milne.
That’s right—Christopher Robin was a real person, the author’s only child and the inspiration for the series. But if you’ve seen the 2017 movie Goodbye, Christopher Robin, you already know that the relationship between Christopher Robin and his father was complex. As it turns out, the same is true of his relationship with the main character in these beloved books. Here’s what Christopher Robin Milne really thought of Winnie-the-Pooh and his own reluctant legacy as the hero of these stories.
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An idyllic childhood
Christopher Robin Milne was born on Aug. 21, 1920. His father, Alan Alexander Milne, kept a home in London for the family, but they would often spend weekends at a country home called Cotchford Farm in East Sussex. That’s the location that inspired many of the locales in the books, including the Hundred Acre Wood. As for Winnie-the-Pooh, he was inspired by a real-life character too. Well, sort of. A.A. Milne bought Christopher Robin a teddy bear named Edward Bear from Harrods of London for his first birthday, and Christopher Robin renamed the bear Winnie after a real bear he saw at the London Zoo.
The creation of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories was a family affair. In fact, Christopher Robin Milne credited his mother, Daphne, for providing “most of the material” for his father’s books. “It was my mother who used to come and play in the nursery with me and tell [my father] about the things I thought and did,” he said, according to the New York Times.
A little boy becomes a household name
The Winnie-the-Pooh sensation started with a short story that A.A. Milne wrote for the London Evening News. It was called “The Wrong Sort of Bees,” and it included Christopher Robin and his bear, Winnie-the-Pooh. But, according to Smithsonian Magazine, the boy and his bear really rose to fame with the publication of A.A. Milne’s 1926 book, Winnie-the-Pooh.
Fan mail poured in when people learned that there was a “real” Christopher Robin. The author would give his son these fan letters, introducing the little boy to his new, widespread fame, and expected him to respond to each one. Christopher Robin also contributed to audio recordings of the book, beginning at age 7, then appeared in a pageant based on the Pooh characters the following year—activities his cousin would later describe as “exploitation,” according to the BBC.
Christopher Robin Milne sours on his newfound fame
Christopher Robin liked the Winnie-the-Pooh books at first and even enjoyed the fame. But after a few years, the book series that was so beloved to readers around the world became a burden to him. When he went away to boarding school around age 9, his classmates teased him about his connection to the famous fictional bear—repeatedly playing the gramophone record he helped make. When they finally handed it back to him, he destroyed it.
People also thought the real-life Christopher Robin and his fictional counterpart were one and the same, but in reality, the two were quite different. In fact, they barely shared a name: Christopher Robin’s family called him by his nickname, Billy.
A.A. Milne tries to do damage control
Around 1929, A.A. Milne decided to stop writing children’s books, at least in part because he was “amazed and disgusted” by Christopher Robin’s fame, the BBC reports. Although he didn’t go into detail about the problems that his son faced, the author said that his son had already experienced too much fame. “I feel that the legal Christopher Robin has already had more publicity than I want for him,” Milne wrote. “I do not want C.R. Milne to ever wish that his name were Charles Robert.”
Harsh words from an angry son
Having first soured on the Winnie-the-Pooh books when he was bullied at boarding school, Christopher Robin really came to hate his association with them as a young man. He served in World War II, then had a hard time finding a job and adjusting to adulthood. He was angry and disillusioned, and he felt that his early fame had held him back. That fame still haunted him, and he was unsure of his place in the world.
“It seemed to me, almost, that my father had got to where he was by climbing upon 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,” Christopher Robin Milne wrote later in life.
Estrangement from his parents
Because of all this, Christopher Robin didn’t speak often to his parents as an adult, and he eventually became estranged from his mother—seeing her only once in the last 15 years of her life, Time reports. While he eventually came to terms with the way his father used him as a source for his stories, Christopher Robin Milne was committed to being a better father. After marrying his cousin Lesley de Selincourt, the couple had a daughter, Clare.
The legacy of Christopher Robin Milne
Christopher Robin Milne died on April 20, 1996, at the age of 75. For many years, including the last decades of his life, Christopher Robin and his wife owned and managed a bookshop.
He wrote three autobiographical books of his own, including the memoir The Enchanted Places (1974), which helped him come to terms with his early fame and his complex relationship with his parents. Still, he was never particularly sentimental about his father’s books, and he sold his share of the proceeds to establish a trust fund for his daughter.
Christopher Robin says goodbye to Winnie-the-Pooh
Although Christopher Robin Milne had a love-hate relationship with Winnie-the-Pooh and the other characters residing in the Hundred Acre Wood as an adult, remnants still exist of his once-happy childhood. After they were brought to the United States in 1947, the original plush-toy versions of Pooh, Kanga, Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore spent 40 years with Milne’s American publisher, E.P. Dutton. They were donated to the New York Public Library in 1987 and have been kept in a climate-controlled case in the children’s area of the library ever since.
The legend lives on
Winnie-the-Pooh, which was bought by Disney in 1961, continues to capture the public’s imagination. According to USA Today, the franchise—which includes children’s books, TV shows, movies and more—brings in $3 billion to $6 billion each year, and everyone’s favorite bear even has a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. He’s certainly come a long way from the Hundred Acre Wood!
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Sources:
- New York Public Library: “Welcome Back, Winnie the Pooh!”
- New York Times: “Trapped by a Stuffed Bear”
- Smithsonian Magazine: “How Winnie-the-Pooh Became a Household Name”
- BBC: “A.A. Milne and the Curse of Winnie the Pooh”
- Time: “The True Story Behind Winnie the Pooh and Goodbye, Christopher Robin“
- Independent: “Obituary: Christopher Milne”
- BBC: “The Man Who Hated Pooh”
- New York Public Library: “Winnie-the-Pooh and Friends”
Originally Published: January 08, 2020
