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Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

And this week we're going to be talking about the 100th anniversary of A.A. Milnes

when we were very young, which represents that light verse writer's first

collaboration with E.H. Shepherd, who would go on to produce, of course, the illustrations for

the Winnie the Pooh books. I'm joined by James Campbell, who runs the E.H. Shepherd estate and is

the author of books on Shepard's work in his life to talk a little bit about the

history and legacy of this great work. James, welcome. Can you start perhaps by telling me just

how did this come about? What was the germ for when we were very young? Was Milne in search

from an illustrator? Well, it was interesting because Alan Milne was a well-known author, playwright and

journalist, and he had long said he had no interest in writing works for children. But all that

changed when, of course, he became a father himself at a rather late age. He was pushing 40.

And although he was a very hands-off father in the way of that

period, he was actually enchanted by his little son. And he used to go upstairs at sort of six-ish

with a drink and watch Christopher Robin having his bath and being put to bed.

And very often he then go downstairs to his study and just write little bits of doggerel,

just little scraps of poetry.

And one of these turned into the poem which many of us know called Vespers,

...