18 January: AA Milne

Today is Winnie the Pooh Day, because it’s AA Milne’s birthday. 10 things you might not know about AA Milne:

1. The A.A. stands for Alan Alexander.
2. A.A. Milne’s father ran a small boys’ school, Henley House, and his son was educated there. One of his teachers was HG Wells, before he became a famous writer. Milne went on to study Well’s subject, mathematics, at Cambridge University.
3. There’s more to AA Milne than Winnie the Pooh. After getting his degree in 1903, he pursued a career as a writer, producing humorous pieces for Punch magazine. Milne took on the duties of assistant editor at Punch in 1906. Later on, he was primarily a playwright, writing both original plays and adapting The Wind in the Willows into Toad at Toad Hall. He also wrote a detective novel, The Red House Mystery, in 1922. In fact, Milne was a little peeved that he became so famous for Winnie the Pooh that his other work was largely forgotten.
4. He served in the first world war including at the Battle of the Somme. However, he caught trench fever and was invalided back to England. He was then given the job of writing propaganda to bolster support for the war.
5. During World War II, Milne was a captain in the British Home Guard in Hartfield & Forest Row, insisting on being plain "Mr. Milne" to the members of his platoon.
6. Despite all of this, he was basically a pacifist as a result of his first world war experience. In 1934 he wrote a book called Peace with Honour. That said, his pacifist views were seriously challenged by Hitler. He said, "In fighting Hitler, we are truly fighting the Devil, the Anti-Christ." He went on to write a book called War with Honour in 1940.
7. Milne married Dorothy "Daphne" de Sélincourt in 1913 and their son Christopher Robin Milne was born in 1920.
8. He used to play cricket with JM Barrie and PG Wodehouse, but fell out with the latter when he agreed to make broadcasts for the Germans during WWII.
9. One of his early plays was The Great Broxopp, about the resentment a child felt against the father who had used his name and image in a popular advertisement. This proved somewhat prophetic, as as an adult, his own son Christopher Robin was bitterly resentful about being used as a character in the books. In his autobiography, Christopher Milne wrote that he felt his father “had filched from me my good name and had left me with nothing but the empty fame of being his son.” During Milne's last years, the two rarely spoke.
10. AA Milne had a stroke in 1952 and was confined to a wheelchair until he died in 1956, aged 74.

Character birthday

Robert Keating: Not a super hero or villain; a “normal” social worker who is Shadow’s boss. Appears in Running in the Family.

Running in the Family

An alien craft approaches Earth. The alien on board is a fugitive, fleeing from an arranged marriage to freedom on our world. She befriends James, a genetics student, and shares her knowledge about the future of the human race with him. 

A science experiment gone wrong gifts James with superhuman abilities; but they come at a price, leading him to mentor others like himself. He founds a group of amateur heroes called the Freedom League.

The Freedom League suffers a string of losses and tragedies; it seems doomed to failure; but one of its members, Peter Mayfield, has vowed to form a group of his own. He is determined to keep his vow, despite having lost Rosemary, the one person he wanted by his side to help him.

Lizzie Hopkins is a talented young athlete and dancer. Peter sees her in action and guesses her exceptional abilities are far more than they seem. He offers to train and mentor Lizzie - but her mother is violently opposed to his suggestion.

As soon as she is old enough, Lizzie takes matters into her own hands; she seeks out Peter and his group for herself. She soon makes a discovery which shakes her world at its very foundations. Her search for the truth will resolve many unanswered questions, but it will also stir up old heartbreaks dating back to the Freedom League's early days.

Available from:

Amazon Paperback;   Amazon Kindle