Christopher Robin Milne, bookseller and writer: born London 21 August 1920, immortalized as the young friend of Winnie-the-Pooh in the children’s stories of his father, A. A. Milne. He was a re- markable man who trium-phantly survived a remarkable childhood, though not without considerable pain on the way.
Christopher Robin Milne, 75, who has been immortalized as the young friend of Winnie the Pooh in the children’s stories by his father, A.A. Milne, died April 20. The Times of London, which reported his death, did not report where he died nor the cause of his death.
His son’s affection for a bear named Winnie at the London zoo became the model of hugely successful children’s books — “Winnie the Pooh” (1926), “Now We Are Six” (1927) and “The House at Pooh Corner” (1928). The stories were later brought to film by Walt Disney Co.L
Although A.A. Milne devoted a career to making up stories for and about his young son, in real life, he was cold and distant, the Times said. It described how the young Christopher Robin was taken to formal visits with his parents at mealtimes, spending the rest of his time with a nurse.
Small and shy as a child, he loved to sew and knit and gloried in taking clocks apart. Sent to boarding school, he learned to box to defend himself against the inevitable teasing from his schoolmates. He eventually won a scholarship to Trinity College at Cambridge University but dropped out after a year to join the British Army. He was wounded in Italy during World War II and returned to the university to earn a degree in English.
He described his father as a man who used his small son’s youth to stave off his own middle age. “When I was three, my father was three. When I was six, he was six. . . . He needed me to escape from being 50,” Mr. Milne wrote.
He sold his share in the future royalties he inherited from the Pooh books to the Royal Literary Fund (which already had a share) and, with the capital, set up a trust fund for her. Money never interested him and he gave much away, but he prided himself that he and his wife were self- supporting for over 20 years at the Harbour Bookshop in Dartmouth.
The shy schoolboy who stammered, and who had been so unworldly that he thought you could send a telegram from a bank, became a successful bookseller and in the Sixties a passionate speaker on children and reading at meetings of PTAs and the School Library Association. Loving Dartmouth, he was for years Chairman of the Dartmouth and Kingswear Association.
SOURCE: The Independent, The NY Times, The Washington Post,Pixcels
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