Remembering Christopher Robin

This story began a hundred years ago when a child became the inspiration for his famous father, A. A. Milne, who created one of the best known children's characters in recent history. His parents wanted a girl and to begin with treated him as one. They were initially quite distant from him and his upbringing was left to a loyal and loving nanny. Unfortunately, this left Christopher Robin Milne terminally shy and lacking in self-confidence. Unable to escape from the shadow of his fictional self, he became an object of continued interest from a non-understanding public.His salvation started with being sent away to Stowe School, going to Cambridge and joining the Army in the Second World War as a sapper. After an unhappy and directionless time immediately post-war in London, he eventually married and, very successfully, ran a bookshop in the South West for twenty-one years. His life was dominated by a love of the countryside, learned at his parents' country home, Cotchford Farm in Hartfield, East Sussex, and much later in Devon. How he turned his life round, against the odds, is the subject of this biography.

Kevin J. Last has degrees in Film Studies and English. Always fascinated by the power of film and their surrounding stories, he has lectured widely and written, acted and produced a series of educational/entertainment shows for the theatre, including The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford. His subjects have included Alfred Hitchcock, the First World War and John Betjeman. He has been published on a number of occasions in the Daily Mail and his initial publication with Unicorn was The Diary Of William Young of Cotchford Farm.