Winnie-the-Pooh at 100

with Gyles Brandreth, Joseph Coelho, Jessie Burtn, Manjeet Mann, Christopher Edge, Catherine Johnson.

As well as being the 100th anniversary of Pooh, 2026 has been designated the National Year of Reading, designed to inspire more people to make reading a regular part of their lives.

Reflecting Westminster’s original Elizabethan charter, the School’s pupils have, since 1560, been “liberally instructed in good books”. It is this ethos that we take as inspiration for a day to champion children’s literacy and celebrate outstanding writing for children.

On Tuesday 6 October, Westminster invites Key Stage 3 readers, aged 11-14, from a wide range of schools to join us for a day of storytelling, imagination and inspiration. Many will be children from Westminster Platform, an academic enrichment programme for gifted and talented young people from London’s state school sector.

To be performed at the Garrick Club, where Milne was a member and benefactor.

Weekes and Wrench was written by Milne in 1917 for Private H S Wrench, a fellow soldier in the Warwickshire Regiment. Milne served at the Somme but was invalided out in 1916 with Trench Fever and spent the remainder of the war with a desk job in intelligence. It was around this time that he started writing his first plays (one of which became Once on a Time, his first children’s book), as well as this one, never performed, from the School Archive.

The play is a short two-person comic sketch built on misunderstanding, verbal wit, and escalating chaos. It will be performed at the Garrick by two Westminster pupils on Friday 16 October.

Written, composed and performed by Westminster teachers and pupils at the Lyric in 2027.

Milne’s theatre of choice, the Lyric Hammersmith, will host the first performances of a musical based on the life of A A Milne, on Wednesday 3 and Thursday 4 March 2027.

Written by the School’s Director of Drama, Chris Whyld and four pupil collaborators, with music by Head of Composition, Jago Thornton, the show will explore Milne’s life right from his days as a Westminster schoolboy, through to his career and marriage to Daphne de Sélincourt.

A special work by the Master of the King’s Music will be performed on the big concert stage.

Each year, Westminster School puts on a large-scale musical concert at one of London’s premiere concert venues, currently the Royal Festival Hall. It is one of the biggest community and partnership events in the School calendar. More than 300 musicians take to the stage: pupils from Westminster, children from various local primary schools, and adults from the Westminster Choral Society.

The School’s Music Department has commissioned the Master of the King’s Music, Errollyn Wallen CBE, to write a Pooh Cantata, a song cycle to be performed at the Royal Festival Hall in March 2027.

This is incredibly exciting, as such a piece could become one of the mainstays of the choral repertoire for young voices for generations to come.

The autumn term Year 9 Fifth Form Arts Festival will be based on some of Milne’s short stories which the pupils will adapt and perform.

A special school Horizons Lecture will be given by Ollie Randall, author of Writers in Whites: How a group of literary cricketers changed English culture.

Milne was a founder member of the Authors’ XI, which had a special celebratory Pooh match versus the School on Vincent Square in 2026.

At the Under School, the brand-new pre-prep’s two Reception classes have been named Piglet and Roo. A new forest school area in Vincent Square will be Pooh themed and named The Hundred Acre Wood.

The School Archive will host an exhibition of items relating to Milne, in the School from September 2026 to June 2027.

The Pooh mural in the School library will be restored, with the School’s bust of Milne placed in this room for the first time.

Down at the School’s Putney boathouse, new boats will be given Pooh character names, and a new racing boat will be named Winnie-the-Pooh. Pooh is very much a mascot figure for Westminster’s rowers.

The youngest of the School’s 11 houses, Milne’s, will host a special Pooh centenary dinner, with special guest, the author and Old Westminster Naomi Ishiguro, who will unveil a commemorative plaque in Milne’s house.