‘He was desperate to escape’: why the real Christopher Robin didn’t like being linked to Winnie the Pooh

British novelist and playwright AA Milne need not have worried. The first Winnie-the-Book was published 100 years ago, in October 1926, and featured a group of characters based on the author’s son and the stuffed animals he played with: the lovable and gloomy Pooh, the nervous Piglet, the hyperactive Tigger, and the pessimistic Eeyore. Far from being forgotten, over the century that followed, the characters led lives far beyond the parameters of their idyllic home, the Hundred Acre Wood.