The first Winnie the Pooh story, The Wrong Sort of Bees, was published in the Evening News on Christmas Eve in 1925. That paper was taken over by the Evening Standard in 1980. So, indirectly, this paper can step forward and take a bow as the means by which Winnie the Pooh first appeared 100 years ago as a character in a story rather than a poem, starting off: “Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie-the-pooh lived in a forest all by himself...”.
It featured AA Milne’s little son, Christopher Robin, as the boy who lived in another part of the 100 Acre Wood, with whom every child reader identified. He is Winnie the Pooh’s owner, though we never think of him like that. He is the benevolent despot in the stories, and we know that the toys in the stories are his, though in the 100 Acre Wood they aren’t owned by anyone, but they look trustingly to Christopher Robin to get them out of trouble and for advice on every difficulty.
