Christopher Robin hated the creations of his father A.A. Milne, pictured with his son

The poem Vespers, about a golden-haired boy saying his bedtime prayers, has enchanted generations of children and parents alike. But for the little boy kneeling at the foot of the bed the poem – and indeed his whole identity – would become an instrument of torture for him for most of his life. Indeed Christopher Robin Milne would refer to the refrain as “the one work that has brought me over the years more toe-curling, fist-clenching, lip-biting embarrassment than any other.” As the star of the children’s stories and poems written by his father AA Milne, Christopher Robin Milne was the most famous boy in the world. When his father went on a literary tour to the United States in 1931 all anyone wanted to know about was how little Christopher Robin was getting on. In terms of global renown, Parents Magazine placed him on a par with the child prodigy Yehudi Menuhin, Hollywood child star Jackie Coogan and no less a personage than young Princess Elizabeth.

Even when he was no longer little, Christopher Robin’s efforts to forge a life independently of his father’s literary creation always led back to the same place: to Winnie-the-Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger and his own childhood self. Customers at the bookshop he ran for more than 20 years in Devon would invariably arrive armed with an autograph book and a child in tow who was longing to meet the real-life Christopher Robin. The gangly, bespectacled figure they encountered behind the shop counter never refused to oblige but it was always with a weary air of resignation. It is doubtful he would welcome the publication of Return To The Hundred Acre Wood, a new sequel to the Pooh stories written by David Benedictus with the approval of the AA Milne estate, more than 80 years after the original was first published.

As one critic wrote, Christopher Robin spent more than 40 years “trying to get off his knees from saying his prayers”. The most mild-mannered and self-effacing of men in all other aspects of life, on the subject of his father he could be brutal in his condemnation. As a schoolboy he declared: “One day I will write verses about him and see how he likes it.” In later life his reproaches were more calculated to wound. “When I was three my father was three. When I was six he was six... he needed me to escape from being 50. “It seemed to me almost that my father has got to where he was by climbing upon my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and had left me with the empty fame of being his son.”

O nly when he emulated his father and took up the author’s pen himself was he able to reconcile himself to what he regarded as his father’s exploitation. But by then AA Milne was long dead after many years of ­virtual estrangement from his son. The popular perception of the Pooh stories is that they were written by a deeply affectionate father for his adored only son. The reality was rather less benign. Though never unkind to the boy, Alan Alexander Milne was cast very much in the Edwardian mould of fatherhood: ­affable enough but distant. The truth is that when the child was born on August 21, 1920, both Milne and his wife Dorothy de Selincourt were hoping for a girl. “We did rather want a Rosemary,” Milne confessed in response to congratulations from a friend. “But,” he added, “I expect we shall be just as happy with this gentleman.” Mother and father each chose a name for the baby but called him Billy, which then became Billy Moon after his mispronunciation of his surname. Early photographs of the young Christopher Robin show a doe-eyed child whose longish hair and delicate ­features made it difficult to determine the gender.

His biographer Ann Thwaite claimed: “His long hair reminded his mother of the girl she had wanted and the father of the boy he himself had been.” As an adult Christopher Robin described his boyhood self as “small for his age, underweight, needs ­fattening up and girlish.” His father was from a solid middle-class background. AA Milne was ­educated at the independent school run by his father in Kilburn, North London, where one of the school­masters was HG Wells. While at ­Cambridge, where he wrote for the student magazine Granta, he was noticed by the editors of satirical magazine Punch and taken on as a contributor, ­rising to assistant editor. By the time Christopher Robin was born, Alan Milne, who was then already 42, was also a well-known playwright and novelist as well as a humorist and satirist. He and Dorothy – always known as Daphne – lived in Chelsea.

H ewrote his first children’s poems during a spell of rainy weather during a family ­holiday in Wales. They were published in 1924 as the collection When We Were Very Young and illustrated by Punch cartoonist EH Shephard. As was customary for well-to-do families of the age, Christopher ­Robin’s upbringing was largely left to a nanny. Contact with his parents was limited to brief periods at breakfast, tea time and in the evening just before bed. To compound the parental ­alienation Alan and Daphne spent ­little time together, meaning their son’s time had to be further divided between them. This resulted in Christopher Robin inheriting his father’s facility for mathematics and from his mother an aptitude for working with his hands.