This is an altogether extraordinary collection, including many things 1 would have loved to have seen when I was working on my biography of A. A. Milne over twenty years ago. A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard are inextricably linked. But boch men were highly professional and prolific — Milne as a wricer (journalist, essayist, playwright and novelist), Shepard as an artist (painter, illustrator, cartoonist) — long before chey came together to produce che four famous children's books. They were born only a few years apart, Shepard in 1879 and Milne in 1882, and they grew up, unknowingly, only a few streets away from each other in North London — Milne called it Kilburn, Shepard St John's Wood. For best, chey both wore black velvet suits wich lace collars, the fashion made popular (ac least armong mothers) by Mrs Burnect's Faantleroy. They met when working for Punch. It seems a miracie chat che Pooh books, as we know them, exist: both wricer and illustrator were young officers on the Somme. Right from the beginning, Methuen, their publisher, realised che potential of cheir partnership. ‘There are highly desirable limited signed edicions here as well as che unique family books, including (most special of all) Christopher Robin's own copy of Winnie-the-Pooh. There are original Shepard illustrations and all sorts of attractive curiosities, a feast even for chose who can afford only to look and not buy.

Ann Thwaite Ann Thwaite has wricten five major biographies, including A. A. Milne; A Life (London: Faber, 1990; republished Stroud: Ternpus, 2006) which was named Whitbread Biography of che Year in 1990. The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the Pooh, an abbreviarted and fully illustrated version of che biography, was published on both sides of the Atlantic in 1992. She is an Oxford D.Lict and a Fellow of che Royal Society of Literature.