Later Life
When World War II broke out, Milne left his studies and attempted to join the army, but failed the medical examination. His father used his influence to get Milne a position with the second training battalion of the Royal Engineers. He received his commission in July 1942 and was posted to the Middle East and Italy.
While serving abroad, he began to resent what he saw as his father's exploitation of his childhood and came to hate the books that had thrust him into the public eye. After being discharged from the army, he went to Cambridge to complete his studies and graduated with a Third Class Honours degree in English.
On 24 July 1948, Milne married his first cousin, Lesley Sélincourt. His mother disliked the marriage, partly because she did not get along with her brother, Lesley's father Aubrey. (She had wanted her son to marry his childhood friend, Anne Darlington.) In 1951, Milne and his wife moved to Dartmouth to found the Harbour Bookshop, which turned out to be a success, though his mother had thought the decision odd, as Milne did not seem to like "business", and as a bookseller would regularly have to meet Pooh fans. While both of these facts did at times cause them frustration, Milne and his wife ran their bookshop for many years without any help from royalties from sales of the Pooh books. He occasionally visited his father after the elder Milne became ill, but once his father died, he did not see his mother during the 15 years that passed before her death; even when she was on her death bed she refused to see her son.
A few months after his father's death in 1956, Christopher's daughter Clare was born, and diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy. She would later run a charity for the disabled called the Clare Milne Trust.
In 1974, Milne published the first of three autobiographical books. The Enchanted Places gave an account of his childhood and of the problems that he had encountered because of the Pooh books.
Milne gave the original stuffed animals that inspired the Pooh characters to the editor of the books, who in turn donated them to the New York City Public Library; Marjorie Taylor (in her book Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them) recounts how many were disappointed at this, and Milne had to explain that he preferred to concentrate on the things that currently interested him.
Read more about this topic: Christopher Robin Milne
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