This a story from a hundred years ago about a child framed by his father as the hero of one of the most famous children’s characters in recent history. His parents wanted a girl and initially treated him as one. This, together with distant parents and an overwhelming Nanny, left him terminally shy and lacking in self-confidence. Initially unable to escape from him his fictional self, he became an object of continued interest from a non-understanding public. His saving came in the form of being sent away to Stowe School, going to Cambridge and becoming an expert on mines in Second World War. After a difficult period immediately post-war in London, he married and eventually ran a bookshop in Dartmouth for twenty-one years. His life was dominated by a love of the countryside, learned at his parents’ country home, Cotchford Farm in Hartfield, East Sussex and afterwards in the South-West. How he achieved this, against the odds, is the subject of this biography.