Remembering Christopher Robin: Escaping Winnie-The-Pooh

This a story from a hundred years ago about a child framed by his father as the hero of one of the most famous children’s characters in recent history. His parents wanted a girl and initially treated him as one. This, together with distant parents and an overwhelming Nanny, left him terminally shy and lacking in self-confidence. Initially unable to escape from him his fictional self, he became an object of continued interest from a non-understanding public. His saving came in the form of being sent away to Stowe School, going to Cambridge and becoming an expert on mines in Second World War. After a difficult period immediately post-war in London, he married and eventually ran a bookshop in Dartmouth 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 afterwards in the South-West. How he achieved this, 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, also about Cotchford Farm, was The Diary Of William Young of Cotchford Farm.