American noted family, the son of A.A Milne, the creator of “Winnie The Pooh.” His father based the beloved bear’s fictional pal, Christopher Robin, on him. The attention that was brought to him from fans of his father’s characters did not always sit well and he attempted for his entire life to disassociate himself from the image of the golden-haired pal of Pooh. He, like his father, was an agnostic, and the poem “Vespers” was a “toe-curling, fist-clenching lip-biting” source of shame. Though a thoughtful and reasonable man, he patently made the subject of his father’s books an unwelcome topic.
Despite his literary affability, Christopher’s father was distant with his only son, who later wrote of him, “his heart remained buttoned up all through his life.” The boy spent much of his childhood with a nanny on the top floor, from where he was taken three times a day for a brief visit with his parents. At times, his mother would play games with him. By the time he was seven, young Christopher was “chief mender” of the family, able to sew and knit and dismantle or repair clocks and locks. Sent to boarding school at Stowe, he learned to box as to defend himself from his classmate’s jokes.
In 1939, he read English at Cambridge on a scholarship, however; at the end of first year he enlisted in the Royal Engineers where he served until the end of the war. Seeing active duty in the Middle East and Italy, he was finally sent home wounded.
Christopher’s relations with his dad were increasingly strained. After completing his degree in English at Cambridge, he left London in 1951. He married a cousin in 1949, Lesley de Selincourt and for 20 years, they were the proprietors of a bookshop in Dartmouth. Though it was slow going to get the business established, it was a great source of satisfaction despite the visitors who wanted to meet “the original Christopher Robin.” With courtesy through gritted teeth, he acknowledged his parentage and for a fee of £10 ­ donated to the Save the Children Fund ­ he would also sign one of his father’s books. He and Lesley’s one daughter, Clare, had cerebral palsy and his ability as “chief mender” was put to good use in making special furniture for her.
In 1974 Milne broke a lifetime’s habit of reticence and published the first of three autobiographical books, “The Enchanted Places,” an account of his childhood and its disturbing aftermath. He followed this book with “The Path Through the Trees,” 1979 and “The Hollow on the Hill,” 1982. By the third volume, he finally exorcised his namesake.
Christopher Robin Milne, bookshop owner, died after suffering for some years of a neurological disease, myasthenia gravis, on 20 April 1996 at aged 75, in Devon. He was a quiet man who lived a modest life, loving few people but very much.
Link to Wikipedia biography