BBC Radio 4 will celebrate the centenary of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories this October with a week of special programming introduced by Her Majesty the Queen.
The season, Winnie-the-Pooh 100, will air at 11.45am from Monday 12th to Friday 16th October featuring five newly recorded readings of classic tales by Sir Lenny Henry, Ambika Mod, Jim Broadbent, Toby Jones and Hayley Atwell.
These readings revisit the original stories of Winnie-the-Pooh, Christopher Robin and their friends. The week begins with a specially recorded introduction by Her Majesty, made earlier this year at Pooh Sticks Bridge in Ashdown Forest.
She reflects on her childhood memories of the stories and describes Winnie-the-Pooh as offering “kindness, wisdom” and “simplicity in a very complicated world”.
The programming concludes on Saturday 17th October with Drama on 4: Save the Hundred Acre Wood, a new play by Edward Kemp.
The drama tells the true story of Christopher Robin Milne’s involvement in the campaign to protect Ashdown Forest, the inspiration for the Hundred Acre Wood.
Alison Hindell, Commissioner for Drama and Fiction at BBC Radio 4, said the centenary is marked with new readings and a drama that explores the efforts to save the landscape behind Milne’s stories.
Photo Credit: Fernando Manoso for the Royal Literary Fund – (L-R) Sita Brahmachari, Dame Julia Donaldson, Her Majesty the Queen, Cerrie Burnell, Jane Riordan, Edward Kemp, Gyles Brandreth and Axel Scheffler in Ashdown Forest, the location that inspired Milne’s original stories.
