Like millions of kids, this bear was my childhood friend

Winnie-the-Pooh brings memories of my childhood flooding back to me, like millions of other kids worldwide.

At home we didn't have a television until I was about 7 and books were very much part of my world, and that included my mother reading Winnie-the-Pooh books to myself and my brother and sister before we went to sleep.

Growing up, I learnt to appreciate the understated humor of the animals in Five Hundred Acre Wood, and Pooh's naïve but trusting nature.

I have to confess I still occasionally read A.A. Milne's original stories, maybe because they hark back to an era of innocence, a kind of middle-class comfort blanket.

There's a terrific book, The Enchanted Places: A Childhood Memoir written by Christopher Milne, A.A. Milne's son who is portrayed as Christopher Robin in the book.

It paints a delightful picture of his childhood, and shows his father as a family man who lived for writing and poetry.

Two of my most treasured possessions are an original print of E.H. Shephard's drawing of Pooh and Piglet, and a brown teddy bear.

Brown Bear, as he's known in the family, was in fact one of the first teddy bear shipments from Canada to war-torn England in 1947, and was presented to me by my Canadian godfather shortly after I was born.

For years he was to me Winnie-the-Pooh, although the rest of my family didn't get it. Grandson Joe is now his proud guardian.

There was considerable outrage in the UK when Walt Disney Co. secured the rights to the Pooh stories, but in a clever move, the studio based its animations on Shephard's original drawings and stuck closely to Milne's characters. It used English accents, too.

I think the main attraction of Winnie-the-Pooh is its pure Englishness－I often tell friends from abroad that if you want to understand the English character read Shakespeare, Graham Greene's novels and Winnie-the-Pooh, not necessarily in that order.

Of course, there are other exports of children's childhood characters that spring to mind.

Beatrix Potter wove a fantasy world around the character of Peter Rabbitt, and from television came the Teletubbies, both hugely successful exports, with the BBC's Teletubbies being viewed by an estimated 300 million kids, if the programs' agents are to be believed.

At this point I would like to apologize to everyone in China for the UK's decision to inflict Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, LaLa and Po on an unsuspecting viewing public.

My two daughters and my grandchildren never took to Peter Rabbitt or the Teletubbies, but Winnie-the-Pooh was a different thing.

When my eldest daughter was barely 9 months old, we drove from our home in Paris to Oxford in England, and the only thing we could play for her on the car's tape deck was a French version of a Winnie-the-Pooh song.

To this day I can still hear the "Winnie l'Orson" jingle in my head and Kim's yelling when we dared turn it o7 .

I think I'll go into Eeyore mode.

Chris Peterson is Managing Editor, Europe for China Daily. Contact him on chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com