Letter: Pooh in the dome?

As Pooh's biographer, I am naturally interested in Gwyneth Dunwoody's plea for his return to England (report, 6 February).

Your reports says he is "languishing" in New York. I have seen him several times and he looks remarkably comfortable, though Kanga has problems with her throat and Tigger has lost the bounce he has in The House At Pooh Corner.

As Christopher Milne once said, the toys "even in their prime were no more than a first rough sketch, the merest hint of what they were to become". Pooh, in E.H. Shepard's first drawings, was based not on this bear, but on his own son's Growler.

Rosa Prince is wrong to say that Pooh has not seen England in the last fifty years. He did fly over (by Concorde) for an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Perhaps Mayor Giuliani would consider letting us have the toys on loan for the millennium exhibition?

ANN THWAITE

Low Tharston, Norfolk