Winnie the Pooh has been popular for 100 years. But fame was not so sweet for the real Christopher Robin
Sunday Magazine22:34Take out the honey! Why Winnie-the-Pooh endures after 100 years
Before they became a children's book legend, Christopher Robin Milne and Winnie were a boy and a bear, roaming London Zoo instead of the Hundred Acre Wood.
In the 1920s, Winnie became a fixture there, friendly enough that her keepers allowed select children to feed and play with her. His gentleness was probably the result of being hand-raised by a Royal Canadian Army Veterinary Corps officer during the First World War.
The bond between the real bear and Christopher Robin prompted the family to rename their teddy bear from Edward Bear to Winnie, said Gyles Brandreth, author of the book. Somewhere, Boy and Beara biography of Alan Alexander Milne published in 2025.
How Pooh earned the last part of his name has inspired several theories – all well-worn stories that may have varying degrees of truth. As Brandreth says, the term came about during the holidays, when Milne started writing about his son who was full of men.
“See [father and son] they came across a duck in the pond and the duck, when they tried to feed it, refused,” said Brandreth. Sunday Magazine. “They said, 'Oh, forget the duck, oh pooh the ducks.' So it was chasing the duck – so you put Winnie and Poppho together [and] that's how the name was born.”
One hundred years after the publication of Milne's first stories about Pooh Bear, Piglet and Tigger, the characters continue to enchant readers, ranking as the third best-selling franchise in the world.
Although its origin has a happy beginning in the friendship between then-Lt. Harry Colebourn and the child he named after his hometown of Winnipeg, the story turns sour as the Milne family struggles with unusual fame.
Bear, train and boat ride
Colebourn bought Winnie from the hunter who killed her mother, paying $20 in White River, Ont., on Aug. 24, 1914, while en route to training at Valcartier, Que. There, he became the beloved mascot of the Canadian Veterinary Corps, roaming the camp hoping someone would give him his apples and condensed milk or send pictures to a soldier's lap.
He sailed with the troops to England on Oct. 3, where he continued training at Salisbury Plain.
“He was allowed to roam freely; there are reports that he slept on the ground [Colebourn’s] your bed in a tent,” said Canadian War Museum historian Teresa Iacobelli.
But the apparent problems of sending the bear forward to France led to Winnie taking up a position at the zoo, the first of six bears from the Canadian forces to find a home there between 1914 and 1915.
“They kind of stop taking bears in england from behind [1915],” said Gord Crossley, director of the Fort Garry Museum in Winnipeg, which is home to Colebourn's first battalion. “BIn the early days, almost anything went.”
That sentiment is evident and defines the early days at London Zoo. Young Christopher Robin would whisper to a zookeeper, who would open a series of doors for the boy to enter Winnie's cage, according to his father's testimony. Winnie-the-Pooh when it was published on October 14, 1926.
“Something brown and furry comes out, and with a cry of joy, 'Oh, Bear!' Christopher Robin runs into her arms,” she wrote.
Teresa Iacobelli, a historian at the Canadian War Museum, describes what life was like for the real Winnie when she lived with Lt. Harry Colebourn and other soldiers in England during the First World War.
'You're more famous than Harry Potter'
The way Milne captures the innocence and joy that can only belong to the most fascinated readers of children. The book became an almost overnight success, selling more than that 150,000 copies in the US alone at the end of 1926, less than three months after its publication.
But Brandeth said the writer grew up resenting the way Winnie-the-Pooh he overshadowed us for the rest of his life. Milne wanted to be known for his extensive work – which included mysteries, poetry and West End plays – not just for his children's stories.
Even worse was the intense scrutiny that followed Milne's son, who became one of the world's most notable children of the 1920s, alongside Shirley Temple and Princess Elizabeth.
One hundred years ago, AA Milne first published Winnie the Pooh. It was an instant hit but fame took its toll on the real Christopher Robin who was 'more famous than Harry Potter in his day.'
“Christopher Robin was more popular than Harry Potter in his day,” Brandreth said.
Although the boy enjoyed the attention at first, as Christopher Robin grew up he became a victim of bullies at school. Brandreth suggests that one of the reasons why Christopher Robin chose to serve in World War II was to prove that he was more than a storybook character.
Father and son remained very close from around Christopher Robin's 10th birthday to his early 20s. But the two separated when the latter returned from the war.
Brandreth writes that Christopher Robin began to resent the role his father had cast him in, while war and first love nurtured him. He came home wanting to be a writer, but felt that any job he got would be due to racism.
“In desperate times, when I was struggling in London looking for an employer who wanted to use the talents I could give him, it seemed to me, almost, that my father had gotten to where he is by riding on the shoulders of my baby,” the youngest Milne later wrote in his memoirs, Favorite Places.
“That he had destroyed my good name and left me with nothing but the empty honor of being his son.”
In the last years of the elder Milne's life, the two men rarely saw each other, Brandreth said, although the differences may have been compounded by Christopher Robin marrying his cousin, whose parents had not raised him.
“So it was a sad story in the end, but life is hard,” said Brandreth.
'I'll always be with you'
Winnie's story ended in 1934 when she died at the age of 20, or a few months before. During his lifetime, he received hundreds of thousands of visitors, his fame rising next to Christopher Robin.
When Colebourn returned from the war, he visited her regularly, and her popularity was one of the reasons why he changed his mind about bringing Winnie back to Canada.
Although he never saw the bear again after 1920, according to his literary colleague, they lived together in spirit.
“If there is a future where we are not together, there's something you should always remember,” Pooh Bear told Piglet. “You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is that, even if we are apart, I will always be with you.“
