Return to the Hundred Acre Wood
By David Benedictus
Egmont £12.99, 201 pages
FT Bookshop price: £10.39

It’s a steel-hearted grown-up who can read the last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner without getting a lump in the throat. Christopher Robin is going away to school; his days of doing Nothing with his cuddly toys – Winnie the Pooh, Piglet and the rest – are at an end. He begs Pooh not to forget him – but we know that childish things are being put away. The sense of childhood’s fleetingness is a choker: don’t ever read it on a train.

A sequel is surely otiose – as contrary to the spirit of the enterprise as “Hamlet II” or news that Bambi’s mum just has a flesh-wound after all. But that hasn’t stopped Egmont from trying, with the blessing of AA Milne’s estate. What is remarkable is how well David Benedictus’s new stories work, complete “with decorations by Mark Burgess”.

Benedictus, a journalist and broadcaster who has dramatised Milne’s stories for radio, plainly knows his Pooh. His book captures the originals’ warm, witty, whimsical tone but also carries the narrative forward credibly. Burgess’s copious “decorations”, meanwhile, are small marvels of fidelity to the spirit and draughtsmanship of EH Shepard’s much-loved illustrations.

It starts – how else? – with Christopher Robin’s return to the Hundred Acre Wood, domain of Pooh et al. It’s for the summer holidays, and everyone’s delighted to see him. They all enjoy some typically inconsequential adventures; one of them introduces a new character, Lottie, an otter of remarkable self-assurance. At the same time, Christopher Robin is clearly a bit older. He rides a bike now and has learnt how to play cricket; he’s also more aware of the world beyond the wood. He wonders, for example, why so many of the countries in his atlas are pink and brings a gramophone for the animals to dance to.

In truth, Benedictus is just a little too fond of these period details, as he namechecks such venerable British brands as Raleigh and Royal Doulton. He also shouldn’t have had Tigger succumb to burping after a surfeit of blackberries; surely Milne would never have gone beyond hiccups? But these are quibbles; they shouldn’t detract from the fact that Benedictus and Burgess have accomplished what Pooh would call a Very Grand Thing.