Why Queen Camilla is leading the fight to bring Winnie-the-Pooh back to Britain

When Winnie-the-Pooh celebrates his 100th birthday later this year, if you wanted to wish him many happy returns, you’d have to travel all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to do so. Strangely, the original cuddly toy of this much-loved British bear – the creation of London novelist AA Milne – lives inside a glass display case in the New York Public Library, alongside his furry friends Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger and Kanga. The Americans have him and they’re refusing to give him back to us – even just on loan. But not if Queen Camilla has her way. A staunch Winnie-the-Pooh fan, Her Majesty is backing a campaign to bring Pooh back to his native Britain, just temporarily, to mark the centenary of the original book, published on October 14, 1926.

Spearheading the campaign is broadcaster Gyles Brandreth, another devotee of the bear, and long-term friend of AA Milne’s son, the late Christopher Robin Milne, who in his younger days used to own the original teddy bear now in New York City. “The Queen said, ‘We must have him back’,” explains Brandreth, who last year published a biography of A. A. Milne and Winnie-the-Pooh called Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear. “I said, ‘We can’t have him back. He belongs in America’. She said, ‘Well, we must have him here for a holiday, for his centenary year. Why doesn't he come to Buckingham Palace? We will put him up here’.” Christopher Robin’s original teddy bear – a soft toy manufactured by London company JK Farnell – was purchased at Harrods for the boy’s first birthday in August 1921. For Christopher Robin’s entire youth, until he went away to boarding school, boy and bear spent every moment together. “My inseparable companion,” is how he described his favourite toy. There were other stuffed animals – Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo and Tigger – all of which would later be immortalised in AA Milne’s books.

In 1925, the author bought a cottage near Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, for family weekends away. It was this idyllic location, along with his son’s menagerie of toys, that inspired his charming children’s books Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928).

British children of a certain age will remember fondly the adventures of Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood – the fictional version of the real Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest. So popular were the stories, charmingly illustrated by EH Shepard, that they were translated into more than 70 languages, eventually selling over 50 million copies. Some have estimated this figure to be closer to 100 million when you factor in reprints and translations.

Many of Pooh and his friends’ exploits have become embedded within the British literary canon. The bear’s love of “hunny”; his and Piglet’s attempt to trap a heffalump; Eeyore’s grumpy demeanour; the friends’ expedition to the North Pole; and most famous of all, the game of Poohsticks, where you throw sticks into a river and watch them glide beneath a bridge.

AA Milne’s characters were later introduced to an entirely new generation after the rights were sold to Disney in the 1960s, resulting in many animated short films and full-length movies. The bear, with his red tank top, is now one of Disney’s most lucrative merchandising products.

The real-life footbridge where Christopher Robin and his father first played Poohsticks – over a tributary of the River Medway called Mill Brook – is now an international tourist attraction. Just this month, Brandreth was there with Queen Camilla and a horde of children, playing the much-loved game.

“The Queen had brought some sticks herself from her house in Wiltshire and from the gardens of Buckingham Palace,” Brandreth reveals. Camilla played three games of Poohsticks that day, taking it all surprisingly seriously. Brandreth adds: “By the time the third game took place, she'd worked out where the current was flowing most rapidly, moved her position and won the third game.” Brandreth believes Milne’s stories contain “a simple key with which to unlock the secrets of the human heart”.

He adds: “AA Milne is very interested in enchanted places. The Hundred Acre Wood – the world that Winnie-the-Pooh lives in – is a world of innocence, generosity and friendliness. It's a world of laughter. It's a world without danger. When you think about how horrible the real world is at times, it's wonderful to know there is a place of enchantment where a boy and a bear will always be playing; where you can feel safe and happy. Winnie-the-Pooh is your passport to happiness.”

Despite the global popularity of the books, Christopher Robin grew to begrudge his famous bear. “When he was a little boy, he loved being Christopher Robin – happy to sign autographs, have photographs taken,” Brandreth explains. “But when he went away to boarding school, he was teased for being the boy in the storybooks.”

This curse of fame worsened when he joined the Army during the Second World War. Later, whenever he applied for a job, interviewers would spot his name and immediately realise the connection. “He came to resent it,” explains Brandreth, who was friends with Christopher Robin from the 1980s until his death in 1996. “In fact, he accused his father of building his reputation by standing on a small boy's shoulders. Tragically, he and his parents fell out towards the end of AA Milne’s life. It is a very sad part of the story.”

After the war, American publishers asked AA Milne if he would lend them the original teddy bear to promote sales of his books across the pond. At this stage, the author wanted desperately to move on from being a children’s writer. He had authored 50 or so plays, novels and other adult works. Winnie-the-Pooh was a minuscule part of his canon by comparison, yet it was all that anyone ever wanted to talk about.

“He was fed up with Winnie-the-Pooh by then,” Brandreth says. “He resented the way his plays and novels were neglected. He was ready to get shot of Winnie-the-Pooh. And so was Christopher Robin.”

So they gladly mailed the stuffed animals to New York where they first graced the publisher’s offices and, later in the 1980s, were donated to New York Public Library. And it’s at the latter location they still reside, inside a hermetically sealed glass case.

Despite the Queen and Brandreth’s pleas, library trustees are still staunchly refusing to lend us back our beloved bear. They claim he is too fragile to travel and, indeed, if you look closely, he has had a bit of the stuffing knocked out of him over the years.

But it’s Pooh’s star quality that is most precious to the American library. Even next to the other treasures they have on show – a Gutenberg Bible, a Shakespeare First Folio and a 1776 Declaration of Independence – the little old bear is one of the most popular attractions.

“The longest queue is for Winnie-the-Pooh,” Brandreth explains. “He is their emblem. He is their crown jewels.”

Brandreth thinks the librarians worry, should they send Pooh home, they may never get him back again. “It seems Winnie-the-Pooh is the literary world’s Elgin Marbles,” he adds. Pooh has flown back home at least twice before – once for his 50th birthday in 1976, and in 1969 to mark illustrator EH Shepard’s 90th birthday. More recently, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron jointly tried to persuade the library to loan him again, but without success.

Not that Brandreth has given up campaigning. With the Queen’s blessing, he believes there’s an outside chance the trustees might relent. “There is still hope,” he says. “The Queen says the invitation still stands.”

The Queen employed a very canny diplomatic tactic when she and the King visited New York in April this year. It turns out the one stuffed toy missing from the library’s collection is Roo, who had been mauled decades previously by the Milne family’s pet dog. So, Her Majesty brought with her a replacement Roo specially commissioned from the original British toy manufacturers.

Brandreth was there at the library when the King and Queen visited. “The Queen opened her handbag and produced from it this little Roo which was then put by her equerry onto a Union Jack cushion and duly presented to the president of the library,” he recalls. “So, the family is complete.”

If the library continues to rebuff all attempts to borrow the bear, there is always one key aspect of the famous stories the Americans can’t kidnap from us: the Hundred Acre Wood where they were set.

During the school summer holidays, the real-life Ashdown Forest that inspired the original stories is hosting a series of events to mark Pooh’s centenary.

Perhaps the best way to wish this humble little bear happy birthday is to visit the famous Poohsticks Bridge, near the East Sussex town of Hartfield. Just make sure, like the Queen, you have a good supply of sticks to throw into the river.

• Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear by Gyles Brandreth (Penguin Michael Joseph, £12.99)