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Birthday Party, and Other Stories
Contents
Birthday Party • Anne-Marie • The General Takes Off His Helmet • Luck Nothing • Breitenstein • Tristram • C.O.D. • Dear Old George • In Vino Veritas • A.V. and R.V. • Night at the Aldwincles • I Don't Like Blackmailers • Spring Song • The Shakespearean Theory • The Secret
Birthday Party • Anne-Marie • The General Takes Off His Helmet • Luck Nothing • Breitenstein • Tristram • C.O.D. • Dear Old George • In Vino Veritas • A.V. and R.V. • Night at the Aldwincles • I Don't Like Blackmailers • Spring Song • The Shakespearean Theory • The Secret
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1948
About the author
A.A. Milne
1,968 books3,911 followersAlan Alexander Milne (pronounced /ˈmɪln/) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems.
A. A. Milne was born in Kilburn, London, to parents Vince Milne and Sarah Marie Milne (née Heginbotham) and grew up at Henley House School, 6/7 Mortimer Road (now Crescent), Kilburn, a small public school run by his father. One of his teachers was H. G. Wells who taught there in 1889–90. Milne attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied on a mathematics scholarship. While there, he edited and wrote for Granta, a student magazine. He collaborated with his brother Kenneth and their articles appeared over the initials AKM. Milne's work came to the attention of the leading British humour magazine Punch, where Milne was to become a contributor and later an assistant editor.
Milne joined the British Army in World War I and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and later, after a debilitating illness, the Royal Corps of Signals. He was discharged on February 14, 1919.
After the war, he wrote a denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour (1934), which he retracted somewhat with 1940's War with Honour. During World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent critics of English writer P. G. Wodehouse, who was captured at his country home in France by the Nazis and imprisoned for a year. Wodehouse made radio broadcasts about his internment, which were broadcast from Berlin. Although the light-hearted broadcasts made fun of the Germans, Milne accused Wodehouse of committing an act of near treason by cooperating with his country's enemy. Wodehouse got some revenge on his former friend by creating fatuous parodies of the Christopher Robin poems in some of his later stories, and claiming that Milne "was probably jealous of all other writers.... But I loved his stuff."
He married Dorothy "Daphne" de Sélincourt in 1913, and their only son, Christopher Robin Milne, was born in 1920. In 1925, A. A. Milne bought a country home, Cotchford Farm, in Hartfield, East Sussex. During World War II, A. A. Milne was Captain of the Home Guard in Hartfield & Forest Row, insisting on being plain 'Mr. Milne' to the members of his platoon. He retired to the farm after a stroke and brain surgery in 1952 left him an invalid and by August 1953 "he seemed very old and disenchanted".
He was 74 years old when he passed away in 1956.
A. A. Milne was born in Kilburn, London, to parents Vince Milne and Sarah Marie Milne (née Heginbotham) and grew up at Henley House School, 6/7 Mortimer Road (now Crescent), Kilburn, a small public school run by his father. One of his teachers was H. G. Wells who taught there in 1889–90. Milne attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied on a mathematics scholarship. While there, he edited and wrote for Granta, a student magazine. He collaborated with his brother Kenneth and their articles appeared over the initials AKM. Milne's work came to the attention of the leading British humour magazine Punch, where Milne was to become a contributor and later an assistant editor.
Milne joined the British Army in World War I and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and later, after a debilitating illness, the Royal Corps of Signals. He was discharged on February 14, 1919.
After the war, he wrote a denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour (1934), which he retracted somewhat with 1940's War with Honour. During World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent critics of English writer P. G. Wodehouse, who was captured at his country home in France by the Nazis and imprisoned for a year. Wodehouse made radio broadcasts about his internment, which were broadcast from Berlin. Although the light-hearted broadcasts made fun of the Germans, Milne accused Wodehouse of committing an act of near treason by cooperating with his country's enemy. Wodehouse got some revenge on his former friend by creating fatuous parodies of the Christopher Robin poems in some of his later stories, and claiming that Milne "was probably jealous of all other writers.... But I loved his stuff."
He married Dorothy "Daphne" de Sélincourt in 1913, and their only son, Christopher Robin Milne, was born in 1920. In 1925, A. A. Milne bought a country home, Cotchford Farm, in Hartfield, East Sussex. During World War II, A. A. Milne was Captain of the Home Guard in Hartfield & Forest Row, insisting on being plain 'Mr. Milne' to the members of his platoon. He retired to the farm after a stroke and brain surgery in 1952 left him an invalid and by August 1953 "he seemed very old and disenchanted".
He was 74 years old when he passed away in 1956.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 20, 2024
Like many readers, I only knew A. A. Milne (1882–1956) for his Winnie-the-Pooh stories and had no idea of how much he wrote for adults: novels, plays, journalism, screenplays, and yes, short stories. Even within this subset, I found a lot of variety. One of my favourites was “In Vino Veritas,” a tricksy mystery story for fans of classic crime whether Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie or Raymond Chandler. The narrator is a writer of detective stories which are often inspired by cases recounted to him by his police superintendent friend Frederick Mortimer. Mortimer tells him of a murder accomplished using a poisoned bottle of wine. But “I could almost feel the murderer behind us, pushing us along the way he wanted us to go,” Mortimer says. The evidence seemed almost too neat, and a replication plus a couple of switchbacks reveal that everything was not as it appeared for the superintendent, or for our narrator.
Milne plays with genre and history here. “The Secret” is a skewed fairy tale that even opens with “Once upon a time.” “The Lost Diary of Shakespeare” turns the authorship controversy on its head. “The General Takes off his Helmet” inhabits the time of Hannibal. “A.V. and R.V.” has a little girl distressed at a biblical account of mass death and her mother parroting an unsatisfactory mainline interpretation about punishment for sin and the need for faith; then we parachute into King David’s court and see him conspiring to blame it all on a woman.
But the stand-out for me was “The Birthday Party.” William Henry Baker, brimming with emotion after the birth of his first child, David Alistair Shawn, early one April morning, sets off by train for his office in the City. His wife has told him to have a good dinner and drink to the baby’s health, so after keeping his happy secret from his colleagues all day, he heads to the Savoy for a blowout meal. Just as he’s worried that he won’t be able to pay the large bill, a pair of diners takes him under their wing to form part of a harmless deception. He’s carried out Maggie’s instructions, but perhaps not in the way she might have imagined. Setting aside the injustice of his shell-shocked wife having to stay at home with an infant while he gets on with his normal life and has a luxurious meal (it was 1948, after all), this was a sweet straight-man-in-bizarre-circumstances story, the kind that might spark a screwball comedy.
There’s so much to discover just in this volume, and five other Milne titles have also been reissued in the last year or so. Soon adult readers will be saying, Winnie the who?
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Milne plays with genre and history here. “The Secret” is a skewed fairy tale that even opens with “Once upon a time.” “The Lost Diary of Shakespeare” turns the authorship controversy on its head. “The General Takes off his Helmet” inhabits the time of Hannibal. “A.V. and R.V.” has a little girl distressed at a biblical account of mass death and her mother parroting an unsatisfactory mainline interpretation about punishment for sin and the need for faith; then we parachute into King David’s court and see him conspiring to blame it all on a woman.
But the stand-out for me was “The Birthday Party.” William Henry Baker, brimming with emotion after the birth of his first child, David Alistair Shawn, early one April morning, sets off by train for his office in the City. His wife has told him to have a good dinner and drink to the baby’s health, so after keeping his happy secret from his colleagues all day, he heads to the Savoy for a blowout meal. Just as he’s worried that he won’t be able to pay the large bill, a pair of diners takes him under their wing to form part of a harmless deception. He’s carried out Maggie’s instructions, but perhaps not in the way she might have imagined. Setting aside the injustice of his shell-shocked wife having to stay at home with an infant while he gets on with his normal life and has a luxurious meal (it was 1948, after all), this was a sweet straight-man-in-bizarre-circumstances story, the kind that might spark a screwball comedy.
There’s so much to discover just in this volume, and five other Milne titles have also been reissued in the last year or so. Soon adult readers will be saying, Winnie the who?
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
April 1, 2025
Not my favorite Milne, but a few really great stories. Spring Song made me laugh out loud so many times I could hardly finish it because I kept waking up the baby. 🤣
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews