Christopher Robin Milne was born in  1920 and was Alan Milne's only son. He is also the hero of the Pooh stories, the master of the 100 Acre Woods.

On this page, we have put some of the extracts from his book "The Enchanted Places". 

Names:

"I have suffered-if not all my life, then at least for the first thirty years of it-from an embarrassment of names. let me now, with as much clinical detachment as I can manage, look in turn at each of the four mentioned above, together with their more common variants.

BILLY survived to get itself into my copy of When We were Very Young, which my father inscribed "Billy's own book"., but died between there and Winnie the Pooh. It did, however linger on among those friends of the family who knew me in the early 1920s and so made occasional reappearances. But today it is totally extinct.

MOON. This was my early attempt at saying "Milne" Superseded Billy within the family around 1925, and thereafter remained my father's only name for me, used by him among his friends and acquaintances on every occasion when something more precise than "my boy" was required. Universally used among close friends and family, my mother only excepted, until after the war, Still surviving here and there.

BILLY-MOON. A rare variant of Billy. Now quite obsolete.

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN. My official Christian name and still appearing on occasional legal documents, but now generally superseded by "Christopher" even when "Christian names in full" are required. My formal name with acquaintances until about 1928, after which determined efforts were made by the family to kill it off. Today used only by complete strangers, some of whom think (or are charitably assumed to have thought) that Robin is my surname.

CHRISTOPHER. Used by school friends and the like from about 1929. Used by my mother when introducing me to her friends from about 1938. Now used almost universally. the only name I feel to be really mine.

CHRIS. A variant of the above used in the army and today only surviving at Christmastime on two or three Christmas records.

C.R. An acceptable variant of Christopher Robin, though not widely use.

ROBIN. Used only by the Hartfield Platoon of tar Home Guard.

(Taken from "The Enchanted Places"- Pg no.17, 18)

In the last chapter of The House At Pooh Corner  our ways part. I go on to become a schoolboy. A child and his bear remain playing in the enchanted spot at the top of the forest. The toys are left behind, no longer wanted., in the  nursery. So a glass case was made for them, and it was fastened to the nursery wall in Mallord Street, and they climbed inside. And there they lived, sometimes glanced at, mostly forgotten, until the war came. Roo was missing. He had been lost years before, in the apple orchard up the lane. And Piglet's face was  a funny shape where a dog had bitten him. During the war they went to America and there they have been ever since........

  If you saw them today, your immediate reaction would be "How old and battered and lifeless they look." But of course they are old and battered and  lifeless. They are only toys and you are mistaking them for the real animals who lived in the forest. Even in their prime they were no more than a first rough sketch, the merest hint of what they were to become, and they are now long past their prime. Eeyore is the most recognizable, Piglet the least. So, if I am asked "Aren't you sad that the animals are not in their glass case with you today?" I must answer "Not really" and hope that this doesn't seem too unkind. I like to have around me the tings I like today, not the things I once liked many years ago. I don't want a house to be a museum. When I grew out of my old First Eleven blazer, it was thrown away, not lovingly preserved to remind me of the proud day I won it with a score  of 13 not out. Every child has his Pooh, but one would think it odd if every man still kept his Pooh to remind him of his childhood. But my Pooh is different, you say: he is the  Pooh. No, this only makes him different to you, not different to me. My toys were and are to me no more than yours were and are are to you. I do not love them more because they are known to children in Australia or Japan. Fame has nothing to do with love.

I wouldn't like a glass case that said: "Here is fame", and I don't need a glass case to remind me : "Here was love".

(Taken from "the Enchanted Places" Pages 78,79)

Some years ago I had a letter from a small child in America. She was very very angry with me because-so she had heard-I didn't like being Christopher Robin. If she had been Christopher Robin, she told me, she would have been VERY PROUD, and I ought to be ashamed of myself for not feeling proud too. It was a "Wol" letter, naturally: I doubt if she expected it to be otherwise. She will be older now. Older, wiser, more tolerant. And if she happens on this book she may perhaps understand just how and why it all came about.

"Pooh", said Christopher Robin earnestly, "If I-if I'm not quite-" he stopped and tried again-"Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?"

I like to think that Pooh understood. I hope that now other will understand too.

(The Enchanted Places-Pg.169)

DISCLAIMER: All the text on this page is taken from Christopher Robin Milne's "The Enchanted Places". If there is anything that you feel shouldn't have been on this page, please write to us at umatanu@hotmail.com. We would be glad to do the needful.

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