HE MAY be a bear of very little brain, but Winnie The Pooh has been named the best-loved children’s book of the last 150 years.

The AA Milne classic – set in Sussex’s Ashdown Forrest – beat the likes of Roald Dahl and JK Rowling in a poll by the website YouGov.

Alan Alexander Milne’s Winnie the Pooh was first published in 1926 and was inspired in part by the stuffed toys of Milne’s son, Christopher Robin, who appears in the stories with Pooh.

Ashdown Forest, near Milne’s home Cotchford Farm, was the inspiration for the Hundred Acre Wood mentioned in the stories.

The family used the farm as a weekend retreat.

Milne continued writing and publishing throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1938, at the age of 56, he published his autobiography, which focused mostly on the events of his childhood years.

An operation on Milne’s brain in 1952 left him an invalid during the last four years of his life.

He died in Hartfield, East Sussex, on January 31, 1956.

A spokeswoman for Ashdown Forest said: “We are really pleased to hear people still love Winnie The Pooh and want to visit Ashdown Forrest.”

No books published since 2000 made it into the top ten, meaning the entire Harry Potter series missed out.

FAVOURITE children's books of the last 150 years from YouGov poll of 2,652 adults

1 Winnie The Pooh – A.A. Milne (1926)

2 Alice's Adventures In Wonderland – Lewis Carroll (1865)

3 The Very Hungry Caterpillar – Eric Carle (1969)

4 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

5 The Gruffalo – Julia Donaldson (1999)

6 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl (1964)

7 Black Beauty – Anna Sewell (1877)

8 Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)

9 The BFG – Roald Dahl (1982)

10 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis (1950)