Goodbye Christopher Robin: A. A. Milne and the Making of Winnie-the-Pooh

Goodbye Christopher Robin: A.A. Milne and the Making of Winnie-the-Pooh is drawn from Ann Thwaite’s acclaimed biography of A. A. Milne, one of the most successful English writers ever, and the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, and of Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore and Christopher Robin.

But the fictional Christopher Robin was based on Milne’s own son. This heart-warming and touching book recounts the true story that inspired the film Goodbye Christopher Robin, directed by Simon Curtis and starring Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie and Kelly Macdonald, and offers the reader a glimpse into the relationship between Milne and the real-life Christopher Robin, whose toys inspired the magical world of the Hundred Acre Wood.

Along with his mother Daphne and his nanny Olive, Christopher Robin and his family were swept up in the international success of the books; the enchanting tales brought hope and comfort to an England ravaged by the First World War. But with the eyes of the world on Christopher Robin, what will the cost be to the family?

With a preface by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, co-writer of the screenplay.

Ann Thwaite is a Whitbread-Prize-winning biographer and children’s writer. She was born in London, spent the war years in New Zealand and was educated at Queen Elizabeth’s, Barnet, and St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Ann has travelled extensively and has lived in Tokyo, Benghazi and Nashville, and is now settled in Norfolk with her husband, the poet Anthony Thwaite.

Ann has written five major biographies. The first, of Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of The Secret Garden, was published in 1974. Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape won the 1985 Duff Cooper Prize and was described by John Carey as ‘one of the finest literary biographies of our time.’ Emily Tennyson: The Poet’s Wife is widely regarded as the most interesting biography of Tennyson himself. Glimpses of the Wonderful, a life of Edmund’s father, Philip Henry Gosse, was picked out by D. J. Taylor in the Independent as one of the ‘Ten Best Biographies ever’. A. A. Milne: His Life won the Whitbread Biography of the Year 1990, and The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the-Pooh, a scrapbook off-shoot of her Milne biography, was published in 1992.

For many years, Ann wrote and reviewed children’s books, as well as running a library for local children in her home. Her history of her own family called Passageways: The Story of a New Zealand Family was published in 2009.

Ann is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature as well as an Honorary Fellow of Roehampton University (National Centre for Research into Children’s Literature). She also has an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia and a D.Litt from Oxford.