“Pooh, promise you won’t forget about me, ever. Not even when I’m a hundred,” Christopher Robin implores his bear in the final chapter of AA Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner. This week Winnie-the-Pooh himself turned 100, and he certainly hasn’t been forgotten. Birthday celebrations have included a week of special programmes, introduced by the queen, on Radio 4; a collection of Royal Mail stamps; and a Google doodle.
Not bad for “a bear of very little brain” who appeared in four slim books. Winnie-the-Pooh, illustrated by EH Shepard, was published on 14 October 1926 and had sold 150,000 copies in the US by the end of the year.
