Goodbye Christopher Robin

The lives of the Milne family - Alan Milne, better known as A.A. Milne, his wife Daphne Milne, and their only offspring Christopher, C.R. Milne - between the First and Second World Wars is dramatized. Within the family context, Alan and Christopher are generally referred to by their pet names of Blue and Billy Moon, respectively. Following WWI, Blue and Daphne's marriage is strained by their differences and by the effects of the war, Blue's military service which has led to Blue suffering from PTSD and Daphne emotional distress. Those differences include Blue's want to move to the country, Sussex, from London, forgoing his successful career as a playwright to write something more substantive along the lines of an anti-war manifesto, while Daphne, in her self-absorbed mentality, wants to retain an exciting life in London, with she considering her ultimate sacrifice being having a child, Billy Moon, which is only exacerbated by the difficulties of childbirth. As neither Blue or Daphne are mentally equipped to be parents, Billy Moon is largely under the care of a nanny, Olive Rand, who Billy Moon refers to as Nou. While there had been moments of love and affection within the family, one of the most prolonged is when Blue is forced to care for Billy Moon on his own, the two spending much time together in the woods coming up with stories about Billy Moon's stuffed animals and Billy Moon's trips to the zoo with Nou to visit a black bear there named Winnipeg. This time together leads to Blue writing the Winnie the Pooh series of children's books. The books become wildly successful as a panacea for the world's post-war woes, only putting Billy Moon in the unwanted spotlight as the real life "Christopher Robin", he knowing people only clamoring after him because of the books and not because of him as a person. This exposure hurts even more as Billy Moon originally saw the stories as the secret world solely between father and son. What happens due to the books' success leads to a greater fracture not only within the family but also with Nou who arguably has more of Billy Moon's best interest at heart than his parents. The question then becomes whether the comfort that the books have brought to the public in general will ever translate back to the Milne family.