More Rosebud: The Winnie-the-Pooh special

0:21This is More Rosebud. I'm Giles Brandreth. And with me, as always on More Rosebud, is my producer and friend Harriet Jane. How are you today, Harriet? Very well, thanks, Charles. Isn't it strange that we don't know in life what's going to happen next? In a moment, you and I, we're going to talk a little bit about A.A. Milne, Alan Alexander Milne. Born 1882, died 1956. And we're going to talk about him because 100 years ago, Winnie the Pooh was first published. and this weekend marked World Winnie the Pooh Day and also the birthday of A. A. Milne. But what I wanted to say was this. A. A. Milne had no idea in the 1920s how he was going to be remembered.

1:08He thought of himself as a playwright, as a novelist. Then he began writing children's books. He wrote just four of them and they made him world famous. Now we have no idea, I don't think we did, three years ago, that Rosebud would become what it has become. That's true, yes. I mean, we really didn't. What did you think your professional life held for you three years ago before we got together and began thinking about Rosebud? I really didn't know. I was working on Radio 4 programmes and I always said to people, I really want to get into podcasting. And it became one of those, you know there are people that are always telling you they're about to do something.

1:51It can be a bit tedious, those people. In fact, my children eventually said to me, mum, you always talk about wanting to learn to sail and wanting to get into podcasting. You need to do one of them. So I went on a sailing course and then I got into podcasting. Congratulations. So you're now a sailor. Hello, sailor. We should be great. Well done. Can you sail? I mean, what sort of schooner do you sail? I can only sail a little dinghy, which is for one or two people. But, you know, I think they're transferable skills. I could get on a yacht with help and do something. You know we are doing for our lovely Rosebud family trips that we're taking together down memory lane.

2:33Maybe you could take me on one of your sailing trips. Yes, I mean, you'd have to be ducking underneath the boom all the time. Well, I'd like the idea of that. It's quite exciting. Would I be frightened? There's a lot of bossing about that goes on on boats. Did you know that? You're very good at that. I would be your cabin boy and you could be the captain. I would like that. We had no idea. We started Rosebud. You thought of the name, Rosebud. I knew the fundamental concept, which is simply to ask people, what is your very first memory? And we were lucky that we began with Dame Judi Dench. And we have been so lucky in the calibre, the quality of our guests ever since.

3:10But it's grown. It's so grown. And we even now, we began, it was just, well it still is just you and me in our little studio with a few microphones but we've been introduced to other things such as having pictures taken filming it yes which we do now film most episodes don't we we do and they end up on youtube well that's a new thing because that's brand new isn't it yeah it was just i was doing videos on instagram and i'm sure lots of people have seen those because we've got lots and lots of followers on instagram yeah thousands Oh, 65 ,000 or something. That sounds good. Yeah. But YouTube, we haven't been putting out the full-length episodes because it was just a bit too complicated and I couldn't work out how to do it.

3:59But now we've got someone brilliant helping us here called Alec, your godson. Oh, in fact, it's Michelle, my wife's godson. Oh, yeah. He is the son of the actor Simon Goodell, my best friend from school, and his mother is Becky Goodell, and they had two boys. I'm the godfather to the older boy and Michelle is the godmother to Alec. So Alec is... It really is the Rosebud family. So if people want to follow us on YouTube, what do they do? I mean, how does it work? I think they just go on YouTube and put in the Rosebud podcast and they'll find our channel. Now, explain this. I mean, I have actually worked this out but there are people, it must be said, usually people of riper years, who don't really know what any of this is, you can get to YouTube on your computer by simply typing in the search engine you put YouTube.

4:51All one word, I think. Capital Y, capital T seems to be fine. I mean, it doesn't matter if you put capitals, but yes, it is all one word. And then you get through and then you give more detail. So you then put the Rosebud Podcast or something like that. Yeah, or search Rosebud Podcast and it should take you to our channel, which you can then subscribe to. Oh, it's free. It's free. Yeah, I mean, there are ads that you watch and I think you can subscribe to YouTube. Maybe you do, Giles. Can you pay a thing where you then get it ad-free? We haven't paid, so we do have ads. And they pop up in very unlikely places.

5:24We live on YouTube. We don't get it through our computer. We have a television that takes us to YouTube. It's an app on our television. And we watch almost only YouTube. Yeah. Well, like a lot of people. You know, it overtook the BBC for the first time this week in terms of the millions of people watching. It's, you know, it's wiping the floor. Well, it is, because if you're like me into what happened a long time ago, it's got what happened a long time ago. Yeah. And it's now got us. Yeah. So basically... People talking about what happened a long time ago, but more recently. Yeah. So we've got everybody.

6:01I mean, recent people like John Major, David Baddiel. Yeah, we only started, we only started, let's say, three or four months ago doing the full episode. So it only goes back as far as John Major, Alan Davis. They were one of the early ones, but some really good ones. Alan Davis was so powerful, wasn't it? Some of the brilliant ones are up, like Richard Osman, Lee Mack, John Major. Yeah. Charles Spencer. Oh, yes. So some really good ones. So basically what you can do is you listen and you see at the same time. Yeah, which is how a lot of people really like listening to podcasts now because it's actually good to see their reactions, isn't it?

6:38So we are now launched on YouTube. We are a YouTube channel. Hey! That is really exciting. I'm really thrilled. So I'm going to go home. I've not looked this up yet. And I'm going to put YouTube, the Rosebud podcast. Yes. And maybe watch one of them tonight. I would love to do that. With Michelle. I would love to do that. Anyway, the point is, people should go to YouTube. Yes, let's try and get to, I don't know, 10 ,000 subscribers or something. We should give someone a prize if they get to be the 10 ,000th. Can we work out who's the 10 ,000th person? I don't know. I need to look into it. But we should.

7:13Please, please, please subscribe. My book about A.A. Milne and Winnie the Pooh is the obvious prize. Yes. So, look, we will work out how you're going to get this prize. Yeah. That's going to be a way. People joining the Rosebud family also. I promised to give a prize to our first person. Have I done that yet? No, Janet. Janet, have I sent her a prize? No, no, we must do that. We must do that. So, the Rosebud family. this is again something new and exciting we didn't know about three years ago basically this is a kind of subscription service yes and actually the full-length videos are also being posted onto the rosebud family and they'll be ad free on there so you get the video and the audio and how do you get to that uh that is patreon.com forward slash rosebud fine and you go in there and there's a monthly subscription to support us and with that you get the ad free but you also get us going down memory lane.

8:06You get our monthly diary. You get my Victorian murder mystery. So extras. Yeah, lots of extras. Oh, that's very exciting. Lovely. Yeah. And we've got a website. We've got a website? We've got a website, which is rosebudpodcast.co.uk. Created by Michelle's godson, Alec. It looks very smart. The reason that's a good thing to have is it's got the list of all the people who have ever been on the show. So if you want to think, oh, do they have Richard Dawkins? I think they did. Oh, yes, they did. And there he is. Yeah, it's in alphabetical order, which is useful, because there are so many, it can be quite hard to find.

8:40I know. From Richard Ayoade through to... Penelope Wilton. Yes. Good. We're going to talk about Winnie the Pooh today because this is the centenary of Winnie the Pooh. When you were a little girl, did you know about Winnie the Pooh? Yes, because... Have we spoken about this on the podcast? I don't think we have. because my dad well I grew up in this town in Devon called Dartmouth and my father was friendly with the person that ran the local bookshop the harbour bookshop the harbour bookshop yeah Dartmouth's a small town and my father ran a restaurant which I think I probably have spoken about called the carved angel which was relatively famous and if you run a place like that in a small town you know the other people who run the other shops and on Saturday mornings my dad would kind of do the rounds and I'd go with him and one of the places that we would go would be the Harbour Bookshop where we'd spend sometimes an hour and a half two hours my dad would sit in the stock room chatting with the proprietor who was called Christopher Milne.

9:46My goodness and this was the real Christopher Robin C.R. Milne Christopher Robin Milne exactly who ran this bookshop and was quite shy. Yeah, I mean, you wouldn't, I knew he was Christopher Robin because obviously my dad told me, but he didn't broadcast that. He was Christopher Milne and, you know, you could deduce who he was, but he certainly wasn't covering the bookshop with Winnie the Pooh merchandise or anything or dining out on it. I think he was very, very understated, modest and genuine person. And I got to know him in the 1980s. And when I was asked to write a book about A.A. Milne and about Winnie the Pooh for this centenary of Winnie the Pooh, I said I'd love to do it because I knew the real Christopher Robin.

10:37And we had a lot of conversations together. And I kept an account of that. And so my book that's just out, called Somewhere, A Boy and a Bear, is a celebration of Winnie the Pooh, but it's also the story of a complicated family. And in a moment for this episode of More Rosebud, we are going to go to the Henley Book Festival where I gave a talk about my book and about knowing the Milne family. So that's what's going to happen in a minute and I hope people will find that interesting and I hope in fact they'll rush out and decide to buy a copy of somewhere A Boy and a Bear published by Penguin Michael Joseph.

11:17The copy Winnie the Pooh you brought in, It's not one from your childhood. This is, yeah. So I've brought in my copy of Winnie the Pooh and in the front, so I was given this for my birthday a long time ago, and look in the front, it says... Oh, that's wonderful. For Harriet, with all best wishes, Christopher Milne. That, you know, is a very valuable thing. That's the real Christopher Robin. I know. Who has given you his book. It's amazing, isn't it? It really is amazing. Would you read the opening paragraph or two of the story, just to take us into our talk? I'd love you to do that. Yes, of course, I'd love to.

11:59So this is the very first chapter of Winnie the Pooh, in which we are introduced to Winnie the Pooh and some bees, and the stories begin. Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't. Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you, Winnie the Pooh. When I first heard his name, I said, just as you were going to say, but I thought he was a boy.

12:43So did I, said Christopher Robin. then you can't call him winnie i don't but you said he's winnie the poo don't you know what the means ah yes now i do i said quickly and i hope you do too because it is all the explanation you're going to get sometimes winnie the poo likes a game of some sort when he comes downstairs and sometimes he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire and to listen to a story. This evening, what about a story, said Christopher Robin. What about a story, I said. Could you very sweetly tell Winnie the Pooh one? I suppose I could, I said. What sort of stories does he like?

13:30About himself. Because he's that sort of bear. Oh, I see. so could you very sweetly I'll try I said so I tried wonderful well you've taken us into the magical world of Winnie the Pooh and we're now going to go to Henley to the Henley Literature Festival to hear me talking about Winnie the Pooh about Christopher Robin who you knew, who I knew and about A.A. Milne who created characters that have lived for a hundred years Here's hoping that Rosebud lives as long. So off we go to the Hundred Acre Wood via Henley-on-Thames. Cue the applause.

14:21Oh, this is so exciting, I have to say. You are remarkable people. It's a Sunday morning. It's 10 a.m. and you are here. It is a phenomenal achievement. My name is Giles Brandreth. And if you're wondering why I am here at 10 o 'clock in the morning on a Sunday, then already we have something in common.

14:47I'm delighted to be here. I feel it wasn't long since I was last here. In fact, I was here on Friday evening for the launch of the festival with my friend Joanna Lumley. And then I went, where did I go yesterday? It's Sunday today, isn't it? I went yesterday to Ilkley. Yeah? Yeah? stupidly I took a hat

15:12I went to the Ilkley Literature Festival which I've been going to, I've been coming to this one since it was founded and I've been going to the Ilkley one since it was founded which alarmingly was 52 years ago yes and that was that wasn't even promoting my first book, I think it was my third or fourth book, it was quite interesting On that occasion, I went to a shadowbang outing taken by the publisher. And it was me and all the Monty Pythons and Jilly Cooper. Oh, and also Leslie Thomas, a man who wrote a book called Virgin Soldiers. And they hired a bus and took us all over the country to promote the books.

15:52And I remember sitting at the back of the bus. This is more than 50 years ago. Holding hands with Jilly Cooper. Talking about sex. I instigated the holding of the hands, she instigated the sex talk. And what will amuse you, or what amuses me, is that about, well, two weeks ago, I was at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire for the Queen's Reading Room Festival. I'm a trustee of the Queen's Reading Room. This is Queen Camilla's project for encouraging the joy of reading. And I found myself sitting at the back of a bus, this is true, holding hands with Jilly Cooper. I instigated the holding of the hands and she instigated the talk about sex.

16:37She is unstoppable, insatiable. Knocking 90, she just can't get enough of it. Anyway, and I feel a certain, if I may say so, erotic charge in the room this morning. I mean, it is quite surprising. You've all turned up. I think you're a self-selecting group. I mean, I've talked to a lot of literary gatherings in my time. I don't think I found one that is quite so physically attractive as this. Anyway, I'm here. And yesterday, as I say, I was in Ilkley, which meant I went via Leeds to get to Ilkley on the train. You go to Leeds and you take a smaller train. And we got to Leeds. And whenever I get to Leeds, I remember a particular actor who, when I was a boy, I saw appearing at the Grand Theatre in Leeds.

17:25and he's an actor that well is not as well remembered as some of the greats of the same generation in the first decade in the edwardian era a whole raft of extraordinary actors were born in this country including names that still resonate like sir laurence olivier sir michael redgrave sir john gilgood sir ralph richardson these names still mean something to a lot of people but the name of sir donald wolfett does not mean so much to so many which i think is a shame because he was a wonderful actor with a great presence, but he also did something very special. He took the plays of Shakespeare, mainly Shakespeare, but also Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, with his company.

18:06He took them around the country, and he would go to a great city like Leeds, and his company would spend the week there, and on every different night they'd perform a different Shakespeare play. So he'd go to the theatre literally every night and see a different play with this great actor in the leading role, with his wife, Rosalind Iden. They had this company themselves. And I was lucky enough at the Grand Theatre Leeds to see him when I was a boy. And he was famous, not only as a great Shakespearean actor, but also for his curtain call speech. At the end of any performance, he would appear between the central curtains, hanging onto them, to show you how he had given his all in your service.

18:46I mean, he was sort of sweating and looking broken by his endeavours. He would hang on to this curtain. Even if he'd only been playing Shylock and hadn't actually been on stage for the last 40 minutes of the play, he still appeared completely exhausted at the end. And he would make this speech, thanking you for your patronage that evening and inviting you to return the following night for whatever the next play was. And I was there on this memorable day at the Grand Theatre Leeds where at the end of the performance he came and hung on to the curtain and said, And tomorrow night, our company will be a saying, the mighty tragedy of Othello.

19:23I, myself, will be playing the part of the noble Moor of Venice. And my wife, Miss Rosalind Iden, she'll be playing the part of the fair Desdemona. And at that point, from up in the gallery, a voice called out, Your wife's an ugly old cow.

19:50Nevertheless, she will be playing the part of the fair Desdemona.

20:03I make no apology for telling you a theatre story to begin with, because I'm going to talk to you about A.A. Milne, Alan Alexander Milne, And A.A. Milne thought of himself primarily as a playwright. And he loved the theatre, he loved the musical, he loved writing plays. He wrote more than 40 plays and screenplays in his time and was a hugely successful playwright. At one stage in 1922, I think he had seven plays on in the West End at the same time. He had plays running in London and on Broadway throughout the 1920s. He wrote film scripts as well. He had a film company with Leslie Howard, great actor, went on to be in Gone with the Wind.

20:45I mean, he was a screenwriter, a scriptwriter, but basically a playwright. One of his plays, actually, is currently being revived at a fringe theatre in London, and I do recommend it, at the Finneborough Theatre. That's how he saw himself, as a playwright. And that's how he would love me to spend the next 45 minutes talking to you about his wonderful plays. And I'm going to talk a little bit about them, and about his wonderful writing. He was also a wonderful novelist. He wrote six novels, each of which I recommend to you. If you want to start with one, I'd start with a novel called Two People.

21:19It's a romantic story, but he had access to the secrets of the human heart. He could write so beautifully. P.G. Woodhouse said of this novel, Two People, I could read two people twice a year, every year, forever. He loved it so much. So he was a remarkable writer. And yet, the reason that you are here, the reason I've been invited to write this book, the reason that A.A. Milne is still world famous is because of this.

21:53Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh made A.A. Milne rich and famous, but not necessarily very happy. In fact, he was already quite rich and quite famous when he began to write the Winnie the Pooh books. But the reason my book is a biography of A.A. Milne and Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh, the reason, of course, is that it's 100 years since the arrival of Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh first came into the public domain as a character on Christmas Eve 24th December 1925 exactly 100 years ago and has not looked back we may explore why he continues to survive over a century because not many characters do a little later but that's that's the reason that we are here celebrating Winnie the Pooh and the beginning of his life but what I want to share with you really is is the story of A.A.

22:51Milne and the part that Winnie the Pooh plays in it. I have some authority here because about 40 years ago, yes it would have been, the 60th anniversary of the arrival of Winnie the Pooh, Michelle and I, we had very small children then and we were reading to them. We began actually reading to them the verses, you know, from when we were very young and now we are six and then we went on to the Winnie the Pooh stories. And I loved the poems, you know, the king asked the queen and the queen asked the dairy made, all of that. I just loved it. The changing guard at Buckingham Palace, Christopher Robin went down with Alice, all of those.

23:29I loved those. And I loved reading them to the children. And what I thought was interesting, when they were very small, I thought these poems are working for me, as they'd worked for me when I was a little boy in the 1950s. They seem to be working for my children. There's something in them. They're still in our heads. Why is this? And I thought, oh, we can make a show out of this. And then running in the West End was a show called Side by Side by Sondheim, which celebrated the music and the songs of Stephen Sondheim. I thought we can do something like this, Side by Side by Winnie the Pooh, or Side by Side by A.M.I.L.

23:58Let's try and, I need music for this. Some of the songs, some of the poems have got music, but others haven't. And I called up a friend of mine, Julian Slade. Julian Slade was the person who had written Salad Days with Dorothy Reynolds. Some of you will remember the musical Salad Days. Looking for a P-I-A-N-O. Anyway, that's the show. And it was indeed, in the 1950s, the longest running show in the West End remained that for many years until the arrival of Andrew Lloyd's Bank.

24:29Anyway I got in touch with Julian I said why don't we do a show based around the poetry the works of A.A. Milne and he said well he said I'm the right person to talk to about this because I happen to know the real Christopher Robin and as you will remember Winnie the Pooh is a friend, Christopher Robin. And Christopher Robin was a real boy, as well as the boy in the stories. A. A. Milne and his wife Daphne, they had their first child, their only child, in August 1920. Christopher Robin Milne, born August 1920. And a year later, for his first birthday, the parents give him a bear that they have bought at Harrods, a Farnell English-made bear, about this sort of size.

25:09They give it to the boy as a birthday present for his first birthday. And Christopher later told me that he and the bear for the first 10 years of his life they were inseparable the bear of course became Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh became the stars of the stories but Christopher Robin was a real person and Julian Slade said to me I know Christopher Robin Milne we can talk to him maybe and I was so lucky because I'm not necessarily the type of person that Christopher Robin Milne would necessarily have wanted to meet I'm a bit Tiggerish and he was quite a shy retiring person who didn't much like talking about his parents or being Christopher Robin but because he already was a friend of Julian who also was quite a reticent person I was given license to meet Christopher Milne and we got on very well and Julian and I we wrote a show, a play about the Milne family, about A.A.

26:07Milne his parents and about Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh, the whole family story and it worked and I'm very lucky, Christopher Milne, we became friends I recorded lots of conversations with him that are central to the book and indeed he very sweetly, when the play was finished and we sent it to him it's all that we'd written, he wrote to me and I think I've reproduced it in the book a letter simply saying, dear Giles I think you've got my family about right which is a marvellous thing, it's quite difficult, particularly somebody who is so sensitive to their story to feel you've got it about right so that's what I bring to the book the show that we did Julian Slade and I opened in Cambridge and was destined to go into the West End to the Ambassador's Theatre in London but it didn't happen for a reason in our version we had the young Aled Jones, then a famous boy soprano, playing the part of Christopher Robin, and who sang, you know, so beautifully, it was exquisite.

27:13Not a dry eye in the house. Indeed, some performances, not even a dry seat. It was a very... a very emotionally engaging performance. But maddeningly, during the run, Aled's voice, he was about 13, 14, Ali's voice began to break and it was a nightmare for us because we were due to go into the West End and what we were going to do, my wife was around in his dressing room every evening with some rubber bands trying to laughter laughter but there we are, so that never happened so, that's why I know a little bit about Christopher Robin laughter laughter laughter Let me tell you the story of the journey that it's taken me to get from the idea of writing a book to actually where I'm standing now.

28:06My journey, in fact, Michelle came with me. We began in Jamaica. Why did we begin in Jamaica? Because A.A. Milne's father, J.V. Milne, was born in Jamaica. J.V. Milne is central to the story because he was a good man, a really good man. He became a teacher. When he grew up, he came back from Jamaica. became a teacher, had his own school in London. But he was a thoroughly decent, good-hearted human being. And he had a wonderful childhood, an idyllic childhood in Jamaica, in, well, in the parish of Clarendon. And we went there. It was a wonderful holiday we had as well. I remember that one evening we were standing on the beach.

28:51Beautiful. The sun was setting. It sets quite quickly. And we were standing on this silver sand. and coming towards us along the beach was this little wizened figure this little nut brown old lady came teetering along the beach little nut brown little bent old lady came teetering along the beach towards us and it wasn't until the figure got to about there we realised it was actually Mick Jagger laughter laughter laughter laughter laughter anyway that's by the by the reason we'd gone was to visit the parish of Clarendon where J.V. Milne was born and we found there an enchanted place and enchanted places are very much what I'm talking to you about this morning in a way it was enchanted, it was woodland but the trees and the flowers were so beautiful the colour of the flowers, there were butterflies, there were insects It was truly an enchanted place.

29:56And this was the childhood enchanted place of J.V. Milne. So that's where our story began. We then went to New York. Why did we go to New York? Well, we went to New York because that is where Winnie the Pooh, the original Winnie the Pooh, now lives. Winnie the Pooh and Kanga. No Rue. Rue, I'm afraid, was lost years ago, eaten by a dog in the Ashtown Forest. I wish there's darkness in this story as well. Tigger and Piglet, they are all on Fifth Avenue at the New York Public Library. Why are they living in New York? They're living in New York because nobody wanted them here. Well, I say, A. A. Milne didn't want them, and Christopher Robin didn't want them.

30:431947, after the war, Second World War, A. A. Milne's publishers said, you won't come to America Mr. Milne would you let the toys come and maybe they can do an author tour instead of you and A. Milne couldn't wait to get rid of them he was rather fed up by then by being the author of Winnie the Pooh he thought of himself as a playwright a novelist doing all sorts of other things well I go banging on about he said yes of course take them and of course they belonged to Christopher Robin they were his toys and Christopher Robin wasn't interested either he said no it's by all means by all means take them So they went to America in 1947, and they have stayed there ever since.

31:21First of all, they were in the window of Dutton's, which is the publishers of the books in America. And then when Dutton's was absorbed by another company, they were given to the New York Public Library. And there they remain to this day. I have hopes maybe of getting them back to visit this country sometime during the centenary year, but they're not high hopes because they are the most visited attraction, the most important item in the collection of the New York Public Library. They have Shakespeare first folios. They have the American Declaration of Independence, signed by George Washington.

32:02They have a whole range of things. One of them I found quite, well, it's fascinating to see, the walking stick that was left on the riverbank by Virginia Woolf when she took her own life. They have Charles Dickens' writing desk. They have 54 million items, but the queue that is longest is by the case that contains Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh in New York is the most visited attraction. He's on all the posters. He's on the front of the New York Public Library. this amazing library its central feature is a bear bought at harrods in 1921 the original winnie the pooh that's what people come to see so it's a challenge for them if they leave you know if it comes to us for a holiday what are people going to go and see it in your public library so it won't necessarily happen but it was interesting for us to be there in the presence of the original toys where do we go next we then went and i'm writing about winnie the pooh the story is set in the Ashdown Forest here in England, the 100 Acre Wood, and I'm in New York.

33:08And then where I go next, I go to Texas, to the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, to the Harry Ransom Center. Nothing to do with Harry Ransom and fish and chips. The Harry Ransom Center, he was one of the presidents of the University of Texas after the war, and he began a collection of theater materials. and this Harry Ransom sent at the University of Texas contains the papers, wait for it of Oscar Wilde Bernard Shaw, Sean O 'Casey Samuel Beckett Tennessee Williams David Mamet you name it, they've got it and the papers of A.A. Milne and they collect them beautifully they look after them wonderfully well why do they have the A.A.

33:58Milne papers? because A.A. Milne's old college King's College, Cambridge weren't interested. So they've gone to America, where they are beautifully looked after and they are open and freely available to all scholars. Indeed, all the material that comes from them, the end paper, some of the photographs, and all the stuff I'm quoted, was given to me free of charge. We believe in open scholarship, access for all, it's here. And in the most wonderful conditions, we were so well looked after. A bit disconcerting. We were there for a week, Michelle and I, and I was able to photocopy anything I wanted, or indeed copy it on my phone.

34:33Quite happy for us to do that, which was necessary because I had to blow up the manuscripts in order to be able to interpret A.A. Mills' very, very difficult to read handwriting. A little disconcerting, my locker, I had a locker and on the front of the locker it said, please do not leave your handgun in the locker overnight. Got to remember, we are in Texas. Eric Caleri, our host, was a lovely man and he showed us around and he said as we were he was taking us down into the dungeons across to where the a mil material was he said i think you're also interested in oscar wilde i said yes i'm very interested in oscar wilde he said i think you're the president of the oscar wilde society i said indeed i am he said well i think you'll like this i've got over here somewhere i've got the original manuscript of salome in oscar wilde's own hand i've got that somewhere here.

35:24Oh yeah, here it is, just under, oh yes, just under the last will and testament of Lord Byron. It's that kind of collection, and here I am with the papers of A.A. Milne in the University of Texas. And what do I discover? Well, the whole of his story. Born 1882, dies 1956. Father had this idyllic childhood in Jamaica, comes to London, starts this school, marries happily has three sons Barry, Alan and Ken actually Alan is the youngest interestingly A. A. Milne doesn't like his brother Barry from an early age they don't get on and eventually he finds he doesn't trust him at all when you look in my book you'll see a photograph of these three brothers Barry, Ken and Alan you will immediately recognize the one that is untrustworthy it's a bit worrying isn't it I don't need to tell you what his name is.

36:23You don't need to read the caption. You will know the untrustworthy one, even though there are only 10, 8, and 7 when the photograph is taken. He just doesn't get on with Barry. But Ken, who is also a bit older than him, he loves. Ken is his boon companion. Ken is the Winnie the Pooh to Alan's piglet, or the Christopher Robin to Alan's Winnie the Pooh, his good boon companion, the person who is always there for him. And they have this idyllic childhood in late Victorian London when you could indeed ride your bicycle anywhere, where you could spin your wooden hoop down the street, when you could walk from Kilburn to the museums in Albertopolis and discover all the excitements of the Natural History Museum.

37:04Just a wonderful, happy, glorious childhood. It was, for them, London was their enchanted place. and I think Alan Milne came to the view that your childhood ends probably around the age of 10, 11, 12 and he maintained later in life that pure happiness is only available to children we can all be happy and he had a happy marriage particularly in the early years he had happiness when he had a success with a play or a book or indeed in the early days of Winnie the Pooh lots of happiness in life but you always know that it's going to end it never lasts that kind of happiness and there's always something to worry you it's never unalloyed happiness whereas when you are a child you have access to pure happiness if you're lucky and blessed as he felt he was and there's a very touching passage in my book where later in his life he's looking back on his father and he's picturing himself, Alan, age 12, when he suddenly thinks, actually I'm older than my father.

38:14And he says, farewell papa, with your shy, brave heart. And he writes about his father, even though he's thinking as a 12 year old, that it's all over. Their intimate relationship is over. He almost finds his father slightly embarrassing. It's all changed. He's now growing up and the father isn't. It's fascinating. So the story is a story about growing up. And he goes to a school. He's sent to Westminster School in London, where he gets on well enough. Doesn't like the food. He loathes the food. A. A. Milne was somebody who really liked, he did want a little bit of butter to his slice of bread.

38:52I mean, he did want to have some honey, like poo. These things were important to him. And the descriptions of food that he gives at Westminster is pretty disgusting. He did not like the food at Westminster. This could be the reason, I don't know, that he left a quarter of his estate to Westminster School. The estate was divided into four ways, and this is important to know about this. One was Westminster School. One was the Royal Literary Fund, because he was interested in being a serious writer and wanted to help other writers. One was the Garrick Club in London, and I think he left his money to the Garrick Club because that, for him, was a safe space.

39:31It doesn't need to be a beautiful bluebell wood to be a safe space, an enchanted place. It can be the streets of London. It can be the Garrick Club. He liked the Garrick Club because he was quite a shy person, gregarious, but at the same time a little bit buttoned up. So he could go there. People wouldn't ask sort of damn fool questions. You could say as much as you wanted, and yet there was lovely nursery food. And anyway, he liked it there. So he left a quarter of his money there and a quarter of his money to the family. And ultimately, a quarter of his money amounted to more than 100 million pounds.

40:02Westminster School received from A.A. Milne the largest bequest given to any school in the history of the world. Not bad going, eh? So I imagine he gave it in order to improve the school food. I'm not sure that it worked, but anyway, that's what he did. So he went to Westminster, and then he went to Cambridge to read mathematics. He was good at mathematics, loved mathematics. Interestingly, a lot of children's writers have. You think of Lewis Carroll, who actually taught mathematics. And at Cambridge, he fulfilled what was his real ambition, which was to start writing. He liked mathematics, but he loved writing.

40:42And even from a boy, he was writing humorous verses, often with his brother, Ken. And at Cambridge, he became the editor of Granter, which was the university magazine. And the university magazine was seen by people in London. And the editor of Punch, one of the editors of Punch, which was the magazine across the empire, humorous weekly magazine for 150 years it was sort of synonymous with middle class English culture wrote to him and said if you've got any other pieces we might be interested in publishing them so gradually he moves to London when he leaves university and becomes a writer and he writes for Punch magazine and quite quickly he becomes celebrated if you think of well-known humorous writers in our time people like craig brown or alan corin he was as well known as that and indeed because it was before the age of radio and before television better known than that because that was the way people got well so if you were a successful punch columnist you were very well known so the initials aam were famous 1913 he meets the girl he marries she's the goddaughter of the editor of Punch and they fall for each other pretty quickly.

41:50She's only 21, he's in his late 20s, but he loves her for a reason. When they meet, bear in mind she is the goddaughter of the editor of Punch, so she knows the magazine well, she actually, their first encounter, is able to quote to A.A. Milne lines from pieces that he has written. This is the way to do it, ladies.

42:12Indeed, if ever you asked him why the relationship had been successful, why he married her, why they stayed together despite the ups and downs, and there were some quite serious downs until he died in 1956, he would answer quite simply in five words. She laughed at my jokes. That is all it takes. My darling wife is here and is proof for that because for 55 years, occasionally she drops off in the middle of one, but if she gets to the end, she courteously laughs at my jokes. That is the way ahead.

42:56So, then comes the First World War, which he hates. He's a pacifist, but he goes through with it because he's also a realist. He writes beautifully about war, beautifully but bitterly. He writes poetry about war. He emerges from the war because he goes and is part of the battle of the Somme. Million people killed. Million people killed. And returns. He's invalided out with trench fever. And by now, he's writing novels. He's writing plays. Hugely successful. Hugely successful. As I mentioned, London. Broadway. Huge successes. He writes a murder mystery called The Red House Mystery a year before Agatha Christie publishes her first murder mystery.

43:40Some people say that A.A. Milne is the founder of the golden age of English murder mystery. Hugely successful. And his publishers say, please, will you do another murder mystery? And he says, no, I've just had a, I've had this little boy born in 1920. He's got this bear that he got in 1921. And I'm doing some verses for him. I thought I might do a collection of children's verses. Now, if you are a publisher, the one thing you do not want to hear from one of your authors is that they are planning a book of poetry. It is not a good idea. It is not a commercial idea to write a book of poetry. So the heart sank.

44:22The publishers though, because he was very successful, A. A. Milner, very well known, they published the verses when we were very young. In fact, they were published in America on the same day, 1924, as the publication of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby did very, very well in its first year. It sold about 20 ,000 copies, which is a lot of copies of a novel for a new young writer. A. A. Mills, when we were very young, sold 200 ,000 copies before Christmas. Word of mouth. People loved it. Indeed, when we were very young, it turns out to be the most successful, best-selling collection of poetry, other than Shakespeare, in the history of the world.

45:12yeah yeah i said hey not a bad guy is it so after that they say we'd like some more poetry could you do us another book of poetry and he says no i've got these stories now i'm writing about these animals uh that my son's got and christopher robin told me that when he was young he felt he was really brought up by his nanny and that was the way with a middle class upper middle class family living in Kensington, Chelsea at the time. The nanny did most of the work. But there was a time before tea or after tea when the parents were there. And Daphne, the mother of Christopher Robin, they had fun playing with the animals.

45:50And, you know, Kanga and Roo and all the rest. They were real toys, all bought from Harrods. The only one that was A.M.L.'s own invention for the House of Foo Corner was Tigger. The others were all actual real animals that they had. and Daphne did the voices and Christopher Robin told some of the stories and A.A. Milne wrote them down and they were published the first one as you know exactly 100 years ago they were published and they became huge global bestsellers and Christopher Robin became enormously famous I mean really famous there was a survey done in 1928 who were the most famous children in the world and there were two of them the most famous girl in the world was Princess Elizabeth who later became Elizabeth II.

46:34The most famous boy in the world in 1928 was Christopher Robin Milne. The most famous boy in the world. He quite liked it at first. I mean, he signed autographs, posed for photographs, made public appearances, went to London Zoo to be photographed with Winnie, the Canadian bear that gave the Winnie part of Winnie the Pooh. The poo part came from a swan that they encountered on a holiday, on a lake. Trouble with swans is they won't do your bidding. You're saying, come here, come here, come here. The swan doesn't come, so you go, oh, poo. So the poo bit is named after that swan. So Winnie the Pooh.

47:19That's actually what Winnie the Pooh and William the Conqueror have in common. The only two well-known people with thee as the middle name. Anyway.

47:31But then the worm begins to turn. A. A. Milne, having written two books of children's verse, two books of Winnie the Pooh stories, doesn't want to do any more. He wants to write more plays. He wants to write another novel. He wants to write a polemic against war. He does not want to go on churning out these children's books because the first ones came from the heart. He wanted to write them. Now I'm going to do something else. And so he'd given up on Winnie the Pooh. and by then Christopher Robin was getting a bit older and he was getting a bit fed up with being Christopher Robin. He was sent away to boarding school, he went to Stowe and of course the boys thought, oh it's Christopher Robin.

48:08Little boy kneels at the foot of the bed. And there was a record, a famous record of Vera Lynn. Several people recorded it but Vera Lynn recorded it and in the common room at Stowe they had a copy of this and they would wind up the gramophone, put on the record and eventually he was so infuriated by it he stole the record took it out to a field in the school grounds broke it up in little pieces and buried it. He hated, began to hate being Christopher Robin. Joined the army, joined the Second World War, went to Cambridge. Of course, in the army, some people, I'm afraid, teased him for being Christopher Robin.

48:39After the army and Cambridge, he was in London, thought he'd be a writer. But his father was already a very famous writer. So he went for jobs, and they'd say Milne. Oh, Milne. Milne, would you be related to A. Milne? Oh, C.R. Milne. You must be Christopher Robin. Little boy kneels up there. It drove him mad. And at that stage in his life, that's when he said of his father, he accused his father of building his reputation by standing on a small boy's shoulders. And he really fell out with his parents at this stage. He rejected being Christopher Robin Milne. He was rescued, he told me, by falling in love.

49:22he fell in love with a girl who he had not met before although she was his first cousin and she was called Leslie and they were married he had not met her before for a reason I mentioned didn't I that A.A. Milne had a brother he didn't like and didn't trust well A.A. Milne's wife Daphne had a brother that she didn't like and didn't trust and didn't speak to for 30 years. And that is why that brother's daughter had never met Christopher Robin before. So what happened was that Christopher Robin met and fell in love with his first cousin, Leslie, who was the daughter of a father whose sister despised him.

50:12And the two families met at the wedding, but then never met again. And Christopher Robin and his wife went down to the West Country, opened a bookshop, which was successful, where they were happy. But they never really saw A.A. Milne or his wife again. Christopher went to his father's funeral in 1956. Leslie, his wife, didn't go, which he had an excuse. She was pregnant. but after that funeral Christopher Robin didn't see his mother again before she died so it's a sad story there is a little happiness towards the end of it and it's this in fact there is really actually in a way great happiness what I am able to tell you is by the time I knew Christopher Robin he was in his 60s he'd mellowed he told me he could look a teddy bear in the eyes again and he understood his parents better and I think he was reconciled to them and maybe regretted he hadn't been reconciled to them in life.

51:16But let me tell you about their daughter. Christopher and Leslie Milne had one child, a girl called Claire, and she was born with cerebral palsy. And when I met Claire, she was lovely, and Christopher said to me, you know, we've only got this one child. And because I'm Christopher Romney, people know I'm Christopher Romney, they always say, oh, do you have children? And he said, I find this quite difficult. He said, but I've now sorted it out. I simply say immediately, yes, we have one daughter. She's called Claire. She has cerebral palsy. She's fine. Thank you. And we move on. But he taught me something very interesting.

51:51And it was this. He taught me, actually, how to regard people with disabilities. He said, if you look at someone through the prism of their disabilities, you will see their disabilities. If you just look at them as who they are, you will see them who they are. He said, Claire is wonderful. She doesn't have a lot of things that other people have, but she's got everything that Claire has. And he loved his daughter. They both loved their daughter. Of course they did. And he loved her daughter, that daughter, because she laughed, she sang, she danced. When she was grown up, when I knew her, she was grown up.

52:23She enjoyed a glass of wine. She was a merry soul. And Christopher and his daughter loved making things together out of wood. They carved things together. And he said his ambition, really, in life, would have been to start a company called C.R. Milne and Daughter. maker of wooden toys for people with disabilities. I mentioned the money, didn't I? They could have had millions and millions and millions because when Disney came along, they bought some of the rights and they bought all the rights and we're talking about 300 million pounds, a vast amount of money. They could have had millions. Christopher Robin did not want a penny of it, did not take a penny of it but eventually began to realize that the daughter Claire might outlive the parents she needed carers she needed a home of her own she needed to be looked after so they took some of the money not a vast amount but some of the money and for for Claire I once asked Leslie I said what does it feel and what does Claire think about having being a millionaires you know having all this money.

53:28And Leslie said to me, she doesn't know the difference between ten pounds and a million pounds. It's rather nice, isn't it? She said. I think it's very nice, she said. So, what happened in the end was, of course, they're all dead now. Christopher's dead. Leslie is dead. Claire is dead, too. But the residue of the money that she got from Disney was put into a trust called the Claire Milne Trust. And a week ago, yesterday, Michelle and I were with the now chairman of the Clare Milne Trust who confirmed what I say in the book is that over the years the Clare Milne Trust has been able to give away 12 million pounds to help young people with disabilities in the West Country.

54:12So there is a honeypot at the end of the rainbow. So the book I have written is the story of a family. A family that has its problems. It's also the story of a writer, a remarkable writer, who wrote beautifully. And it's a story of a creation of an enchanted place and a set of characters that still live for us. And as I conclude, I wonder why they still live for us. I don't think I know the answer. It's because the books still work because they're beautifully written. They can work at any age. He was a great writer. But they work for another reason. In this country, we've got a wonderful heritage of children's authors, all of whom have created enchanted places of a kind.

54:59You think of Wind in the Willows and the Riverbank. You think of Alice in Wonderland. You think of Peter Pan and Neverland. But these are enchanted places where there's quite a lot of darkness too. You know, in the Riverbank, there's Stokes and Weasels. The Mad Hatter's a little bit menacing. The Jabberwocky is truly terrifying. And Peter Pan, there's Captain hook and all those parrots. But in the world of poo, in the hundred acre wood, there are adventures, excitements, balloons burst, but there is happiness, there is gratitude, there is warmth, there is joy, there is love. And if you think what a beastly bitter world this is, by opening those children's books written by A.

55:45Milne 100 years ago, you have a passport, an instant passport, that will take you to an enchanted place. It's extraordinary, isn't it? And if you had a good childhood, as I sit down, when you are courteously, as I know you will be, when you're courteously applauding me, if you had a good childhood, as I sit down, think of your parents and clap them too. Thank you.

56:23Oh my. Well, as you could tell, Harriet, I found all that quite affecting. Thinking of one's parents, if we'd had lucky childhoods, and thinking what a gift Winnie the Pooh is if you didn't have such a happy childhood. They are extraordinary, the stories, aren't they? They are, they are. They're so charming and so funny. And you were given the first volume, signed by Christopher Robin himself, and you've got the second volume. You only wrote two Winnie the Pooh books, the second one, The House at Pooh Corner, also signed by Christopher Robin Mill. I know. You are very, very lucky. You are. Why don't we end this episode with you reading the end of The House at Pooh Corner?

57:06And by the way, I hope people found my talk interesting. There is a book, and I hope you'll find that interesting too. It's simply called Somewhere, A Boy and a Bear by me, Charles Brandreth, published by Michael Joseph. So read that. Whatever you do, go back to your copies of Winnie the Pooh and The House of Pooh Corner and read those. And you'll want to, I know, after Harriet's read you, the end of The House of Pooh Corner. Yes, and don't cry while I read this. We all will. You can't not, I don't think. I know Giles will be. Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred.

57:50Pooh thought for a little. How old shall I be then? Ninety-nine. Pooh nodded. I promise, he said. Still, with his eyes on the world, Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw. 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? Understand what? Oh, nothing. He laughed and jumped to his feet. Come on. where said Pooh anywhere said Christopher Robin so they went off together but wherever they go and whatever happens to them on the way in that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing always that's the promise of Winnie the Pooh we've loved having your company again today and we look forward to being with you next time so from me, Giles Brandreth from harriet jane from winnie the pooh christopher robin and a.a milne until next time bye

59:53That was more Rosebud with music by Phil Leppard, production by Harriet Jane, and in the chair, me. Charles Brandreth. Thank you for listening.