Why Christopher Robin despised his father for 'filching his good name'

Once upon a time I knew Christopher Robin – the real Christopher Robin, the boy in the poems and story books written by his father, A. A. Milne.

I knew Christopher Robin in the 1980s when he was in his 60s. When he was a little boy, he was famous – the most famous little boy in the world.

When he was born in 1920, his parents, Alan and Daphne Milne, had wanted a girl. They had planned to call her Rosemary. When a son appeared, they named him Christopher Robin 'for no particular reason', according to his father.

'At home,' said Alan, 'almost as soon as he could talk, he was known as 'Moon' ', because of the funny way he pronounced the family name of Milne.

For his first birthday, on August 21, 1921, Christopher was given a brown cuddly toy teddy bear. The bear came from Harrods (the department store in Knightsbridge) and was soon christened Winnie-the-Pooh.