Today makes the centenary of the publication of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, which brought the bear of little brain to the world’s attention. It was not, in truth, the ubiquitous ursine’s first appearance – that would be Milne’s nearly-as-beloved When We Were Very Young, which came into the nation’s bookshops in 1924 – but that featured a rather cloying poem called ‘Teddy Bear’, featuring ‘Mr Edward Bear’, who would, if he was born today, probably need to go on the Ozempic: 

‘A bear, however hard he tries, Grows tubby without exercise. Our Teddy Bear is short and fat, Which is not to be wondered at.’ 

Yet it would be Winnie-the-Pooh that would give the bear a greater dose of popularity as well as introducing his fellow residents of the Hundred Acre Wood. Gone is the rather twee poetry, and in its place are a delightful collection of stories that revolve around the (mis) adventures of Pooh and his friends, of whom the most entertaining, as far as contemporary readers are concerned, is the lugubriously pessimistic donkey Eeyore, who is only too ready to see the bad side of everything.  

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The human counterpart to the animals is Christopher Robin, named and inspired after Milne’s own........

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