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Pooh celebrates 75th birthday

The Pooh Sticks bridge in the Hundred Acre Wood

The honey-loving bear's antics have been translated into more than 40 languages including Thai, Hebrew and Braille.

Events were held around the UK to mark the birthday on Sunday and visitors gathered at the famous Pooh Sticks bridge.

In the stories the bridge was in the Hundred Acre Wood, in Ashdown Forest, Sussex, where the Milne family had a cottage.

Winnie the Pooh was named after a real Canadian black bear called Winnie which lived at London Zoo.

The first appearance of the bear in a short story came in 1925 with the publication of The Wrong Sort of Bees in a Christmas Eve edition of the London Evening News.

Fans of the stories, and their subsequent Disney cartoon incarnations, enjoy going to the Pooh Sticks bridge which was renovated and reopened in 1979 by Christopher Robin Milne, the author's son.

As part of the birthday celebrations the actor Nigel Havers read some of his favourite Winnie the Pooh stories at a West London bookstore.

Elsewhere, characters from the famous books such as Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore made special appearances.