Winnie-the-pooh and the royal college of surgeons

Connections between AA Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh and the hallowed portals of the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincolns Inn Fields seem highly unlikely and yet they are connected. Alan Alexander Milne (1882–1956)¹ is best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh. He was educated at Westminster and Cambridge, where he read Mathematics. After graduation he joined the staff of Punch and there he met and worked with the cartoonist EH Shepard, who was subsequently to illustrate his poems and the Winnie-the-Pooh books. AA Milne served in both world wars and had one son, Christopher Robin, who used to go to London Zoo with his father (Figure 1) to see a bear called Winnie. The boy loved this little bear and renamed his teddy (previously called Edward Bear) after him. The skull of the bear responsible for the name change is in the Hunterian Museum and you just have to walk into the museum, past the reception desk and back left, and there it is, beautifully displayed and labelled. This article tells the story, but let's start with AA Milne's own description from the Introduction to his famous book, Winnie-the-Pooh, first published 14th October 1926.