Winnie-the-Pooh at 100: PW Talks with Gyles Brandreth

In Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear, the biographer explores the complicated life of A.A. Milne and his Winnie-the-Pooh stories.

What drew you to this subject?

My publisher said to me that we’re about to celebrate the centenary of Winnie-the-Pooh and that I might be the right person for this because in my big biography of the late Queen Elizabeth II, I write about her and Winnie-the-Pooh. She was born in 1926, the year the book was published. I said that I am the right person because I knew the real Christopher Robin. I met Christopher Milne, on whom Christopher Robin is based, 40 years ago when I wrote a play about the Milne family. You’re shaking the hand that shook the hand that held the paw of the original Winnie-the-Pooh.

In what ways was A.A. Milne a complex person?

Winnie-the-Pooh is his most famous book, but that frustrated him hugely because he was a playwright, a novelist, a polemicist. He was a serious writer and a very popular writer. In the 1920s, he had plays running on Broadway and in the West End of London simultaneously. He also had complicated feelings about life. He was a shy person, but also a gregarious person at the same time. He was quite buttoned-up. He didn’t give a lot of himself away. And yet he was a great observer and could write brilliantly about people. He believed that pure happiness is only available when you are a child.

What were you most surprised to learn?

I was surprised to learn that Milne was so prolific. He wrote more than a million words—40 plays and screenplays, 20 plays on Broadway, seven movies. All of this was totally obliterated by Winnie-the-Pooh. Then I was surprised to find that the Winnie-the-Pooh books—thanks to Disney but also thanks to the success of the books themselves—have been huge sellers since they were published. So he has been a publishing phenomenon and a financial phenomenon.

Why are the Pooh stories so enduring?

They are set in an enchanted place like Wonderland in Alice in Wonderland or Neverland in Peter Pan. But it is a place of sunshine where there is no darkness. Because they’re beautifully written, they work for adults as well as children. Though the characters are toys—a teddy bear, a toy kangaroo, a toy donkey—they have human characteristics that we all recognize. Everybody knows a Tigger. Everybody knows an Eeyore. These books provide a passport to the pure happiness of childhood.