New 'Winnie The Pooh' book announced

The first officially-sanctioned Pooh Bear book in 80 years will be released in October.

The guardians of creator A. A. Milne's estate have announced that David Benedictus will write the follow-up to 1926 story collection Winnie-The-Pooh and 1928 anthology The House At Pooh Corner.

"A lot of people have tried [to write one] including me, but most people only score eight out of ten. You have got to have somebody who scores ten out of ten, and David seemed to have the feel and the spirit and the turn of phrase of the originals," said Michael Brown, representative for the trustees of the author's estate.

Waterstone's children's buyer Sarah Clarke believes that the book will prove to be a bigger success than the Peter Pan sequel, published in 2006.

She said: "The original Winnie-The-Pooh books outsell Peter Pan six to one. If that extended itself to interest in the new book, we are talking about a monster hit."