Family: In which Winnie-the-Pooh entertains a new generation

Dec 23 2009 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

This year’s children’s publishing sensation, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, has breathed new life into an old friend - A A Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. The book is a Christmas best-seller, bought by those who want to give today’s children the chance to enjoy the innocent pleasures of Christopher Robin’s world. Hilarie Stelfox talked to the book’s author David Benedictus during his recent visit to Huddersfield

THOSE of us who were brought up on the tales of a ‘silly old bear’ and his Hundred Acre Wood friends probably experienced a twinge of anxiety when we heard that a follow-up to the famous A A Milne Winnie-the-Pooh books was being written.

Could the esteemed novelist and script-writer David Benedictus really capture the whimsical and subtle style of the original author? Or would Return to the Hundred Acre Wood be a ‘Disneyesque’ travesty?

Fortunately, the book, which has been authorised by the Milne estate trustees and was published earlier this year, turned out to be both faithful and true to the spirit of the 1920s children’s books.

If anyone could do it then it had to be David, who produced the phenomenally successful audio books of Winnie-the-Pooh and the House at Pooh Corner with an all-star cast.

“When we were in post production,’’ said David, who headed the BBC’s Book At Bedtime slot until 1995, ‘’I had all the actors’ voices buzzing around in my head and thought it would be interesting to write some Winnie-the-Pooh stories.

“I wrote two, the first of which is in the book, and sent them to the trustees. At that time they said there was nothing they could do because they had sold all the rights to the Disney Corporation.

“But after a while they got back to me and said could I come up with another eight story lines, so they must have sorted out the legal issues,’’ he explained.

David, 71, set about researching his subject. He read biographies of A A Milne and copies of Punch. “Milne was the assistant editor of Punch and wrote pieces every week. I read all of those and went to the Hundred Acre Wood (Ashdown Forest) where the books are set,’’ he said.

“It seemed to me that it was an acting job and if I could imagine what it was like to be Milne the stories would come out,’’ he added.

“The writing wasn’t very difficult, the plots were more difficult and I found the ‘hums’ very difficult.’’

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood has, says David, the same 1920’s ‘feel’.

“I thought it was important to keep to the period. There were a lot of white middle-class males, such as Milne and JM Barrie, writing children’s books at that time about the kind of life in England that never really existed.

“It was very popular in America where it represented an idyllic Utopian England.’’

In fact, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood is also proving popular in America – around 300,000 copies were printed for the US and only 80,000 for the home market, although the book has now gone into a re-print. (It has also been translated into many languages, including Japanese and Polish).

But David knows he’s up against the Disney generation view of Winnie-the-Pooh.

“I gave readings of the book to students, teachers and librarians at Oxford University in July – they host American exchange students every year. The younger ones had been brought up on the Disney cartoons but the teachers and librarians recognised the style of the original,’’ said David.

Because of their gentle innocence and humour, David believes that the Winnie-the-Pooh stories counteract the violence and nastiness in more modern children’s books

“I kept thinking about Watership Down. It’s filled with the threat of horrors and disaster. Harry Potter, Tolkein and Lemony Snicket are also full of horrors and threats and evil.

“Going back to Milne was like flying in the face of these books because it’s such an innocent world,’’ he said.

Only one new character has been introduced into the Hundred Acre Wood, that of an otter called Lottie. Aware that the original books were short of female characters and Kanga represented a housewifely figure more in keeping with 1920s England, Lottie is a feisty and slightly pompous addition.

“Originally, it was going to be a grass snake because I like them, but the publishers though it would be too scary. The otter was a sort of corporate decision,’’ said David, who was also asked to make changes to a story about cricket.

“I wanted to have a cricket story because Milne was crazy about it. But the Polish publishers said they didn’t like it because no-one there understood cricket and could I make it football. But I thought I’d make it golf for the American publishers, but they said no because it wasn’t child-friendly.

“In the end, in true Milne fashion, I added a bit in which one of the animals explains the rules of cricket.’’

A father of four, with three young grandchildren, David is now looking forward to raising the next generation of his family on Winnie-the-Pooh and is, I sense, a little disappointed that he wasn’t allowed to record the audio book himself – instead it features the voice of Bernard Cribbens.

Although he wrote his first book in 1962 and has covered every genre from history and antiques to novels and stamp collecting (he’s a part-time stamp dealer), it is the foray into the Hundred Acre Wood that, I suspect, will make him an enduring household name.

Having completed scores of interviews and book signings in the UK, David is off to America in the New Year to convert Disney fans to the real thing. ( I met up with him at a book signing in the Children’s Bookshop, Lindley).

l Return to the Hundred Acre Wood picks up where the previous book left off.

“I decided that Christopher Robin had been away at boarding school and was home for the summer. The original books never make it clear where he goes,’’ explained David. The book is beautifully illustrated, in the style of the original illustrator E H Shepard, by Mark Burgess, and published by Egmont at £12.99 in hardback.