CHRISTOPHER ROBIN CENTENARY 21 August 2020

Update on Sunday, August 16, 2020 at 11:23AM by Kathy Stansfield

Andrea Saunders, Manager of the Dartmouth Community Bookshop, with the famous photo of A. A. Milne with Christopher on his knee, and to the left the collection of toys featured as characters in the books, on which E.H. Shepherd based his wonderful illustrations. Christopher was born on 21 August 1920, so would have been 100 years old this year.

The man who was famous as a boy with a bear called Winnie-the-Pooh came to Dartmouth from London with his wife, Lesley, in 1951. They opened the Harbour Bookshop on Fairfax Place and ran it for the next 21 years when it became a much-loved landmark.

Dartmouth Community Bookshop has a close connection to Christopher Milne, being set up at 12 Higher Street following the closure of the Harbour Bookshop in 2011. It is a community co-operative using fixtures and fittings from the old bookshop, and employing the manager, Andrea Saunders who remembers Christopher hiding from customers who wanted to meet him.