21 August 1920: Christopher Robin Milne is born

Christopher Robin Milne was born in Chelsea, London, on 21 August 1920. He was the first and only child born to former British Army officer Alan Alexander Milne and his wife Daphne. From an early age, Milne was cared for by his nanny Olive Brockwell, until May 1930, when he entered boarding school. Milne called her Nou.

On his first birthday, young Christopher Robin was given a cream-coloured teddy bear that he named Edward. This teddy, along with an actual bear at the London Zoo named Winnie and a swan named Pooh, became the basis for Milne’s classic children’s character, Winnie-the-Pooh. Eeyore was a Christmas present in 1921 and Piglet arrived undated. Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared in Milne’s 1924 book of children’s verses, When We Were Very Young.

Milne’s early years were happy ones, but once his father included him and his toys in Now We are Six and Winnie-the-Pooh, the boy was mercilessly teased and lived under a spotlight of media attention. He came to loathe the poem Vespers (“Christopher Robin is saying his prayers …”) because he was so endlessly teased about it, while the lines “Christopher Robin goes hoppity hoppity hoppity hoppity hop …” drove him almost to distraction.

In the end, he escaped by distancing himself from his famous father, and making a marriage to a cousin with whom his mother was not on speaking terms, so there was a sad family rupture. He did finally capitalise on his fame by running a bookshop and writing a gorgeous memoir, The Enchanted Places, followed by Path Through the Trees, both of which I can highly recommend.

Writing his memoirs seemed cathartic for Milne, “Believe it or not, I can look at those four [Winnie-the-Pooh] books without flinching,” he said at age 60, and he worked to help preserve Ashdown forest, the inspiration for the Hundred Acre Wood, from mining.

Goodbye Christopher Robin, a 2017 film was “inspired by” Milne’s relationship with his father.

Milne died in April 1996 aged 75.